Warrant insofar as it directs Microsoft to collect, import, and produce to the government
customer content stored outside the United States.
BACKGROUND
I.
Microsoft’s Web‐Based E‐mail Service
The factual setting in which this dispute arose is largely undisputed and is
established primarily by affidavits submitted by or on behalf of the parties.
Microsoft Corporation is a United States business incorporated and
headquartered in Washington State. Since 1997, Microsoft has operated a “web‐based
e‐mail” service available for public use without charge. Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) at 35. It
calls the most recent iteration of this service Outlook.com.1 The service allows Microsoft
customers to send and receive correspondence using e‐mail accounts hosted by the
company. In a protocol now broadly familiar to the ordinary citizen, a customer uses a
computer to navigate to the Outlook.com web address, and there, after logging in with
username and password, conducts correspondence electronically.
Microsoft explains that, when it provides customers with web‐based access to
e‐mail accounts, it stores the contents of each user’s e‐mails, along with a variety of
non‐content information related to the account and to the account’s e‐mail traffic, on a
network of servers.2 The company’s servers are housed in datacenters operated by it
and its subsidiaries.3
The company inaugurated Outlook.com in 2013 as a successor to Microsoft’s earlier
Hotmail.com and MSN.com services.
2 A “server” is “a shared computer on a network that provides services to clients. . . . An
Internet‐connected web server is [a] common example of a server. ” Harry Newton & Steve
Schoen, Newton’s Telecom Dictionary 1084 (28th ed. 2014) (“Newton’s Telecom Dictionary”).
3 A “datacenter” is “[a] centralized location where computing resources (e.g. host computers,
servers, peripherals, applications, databases, and network access) critical to an organization are
maintained in a highly controlled physical environment (temperature, humidity, etc.).”
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