the focus of such a provision is not on the place where the service provider stores the communications, but on the place where the service provider discloses the information to the government, as requested.6 The nature of the records demanded is also relevantly different from that of the physical documents sought by traditional search warrants. Tangible documents, having a material existence in the physical world, are stored in a particular physical location. Executing a traditional search warrant requires a visit to that location, to visually inspect the documents to select the responsive materials and to take those materials away. Even when tangible documents are sought by subpoena, rather than by search warrant, it is arguable that the focus of the “Email correspondance,” Microsoft explains, is unlike bank records because it “is personal, even intimate,” and “can contain the sum of an individual’s private life.” Id. at 44 (internal quotation marks omitted). Even assuming, however, that Microsoft accurately characterizes the cases it seeks to distinguish, but cf. In re Horowitz, 482 F.2d 72 (2d Cir. 1973) (partially upholding a subpoena requiring an accountant to produce the contents of three locked file cabinets belonging to a client), this privacy-based argument is, as explained above, a red herring. Microsoft does not dispute that the government could have required the disclosure of the emails at issue here if they were stored in the United States, and Microsoft’s decision to store them abroad does not obviously entitle their owner to any higher degree of privacy protection. 6 As the government notes, the selection of the term “warrant” to describe an instrument that does not operate like a traditional arrest or search warrant is easily explained by the fact that the provision in question, which permits government access to a person’s stored communications without notice to that person, provides the highest level of privacy protection in the statute: the requirement that an independent judicial officer determine that probable cause exists to believe that a crime has been committed and that evidence of that crime may be found in the communications demanded. The showing necessary to obtain judicial authorization to require the service provider to disclose the communications is that associated with traditional warrants; the manner in which the disclosure is obtained by the government, however, is more closely analogous to the workings of subpoenas and court-ordered discovery: the government serves the service provider with an order from a court that requires the service provider to look within its records and disclose the specified information to the government; it does not present to the service provider a court order that permits government agents to search through the service provider’s premises and documents and seize the specified information. 12