contain evidence of criminal activity, and even if that criminal activity is a terrorist plot.2 Or to be more precise, the customer’s privacy in that case is absolute as against the government; her privacy is protected against Microsoft only to the extent defined by the terms of her (adhesion) contract with the company. Reasonable people might conclude that extremely stringent safeguards ought to apply to government investigators’ acquisition of the contents of private email communications, and that the provisions of the SCA, as applied domestically, should be enhanced to provide even greater privacy, at an even higher cost to criminal investigations. Other reasonable people might conclude that, at least in some cases, investigators should have freer access to stored communications. It is the traditional task of Congress, in enacting legislation, and of the courts, in interpreting the Fourth Amendment, to strike a balance between privacy interests and law enforcement needs. But neither privacy interests nor the needs of law enforcement vary depending on whether a private company chooses to store records here or abroad – particularly when the “records” are electronic zeros and ones that can be moved around the world in seconds, and will be so moved whenever it suits the convenience or commercial purposes of the company. The issue facing the Court, then, is not actually about the need to enhance privacy protections for information that Americans choose to store in the “cloud.” 2 Although the Court does not reach the question, its opinion strongly suggests that that protection is absolute in the further sense that it applies also to less-protected categories of information otherwise reachable by the SCA’s other disclosure-compelling instruments – subpoenas and court orders. If, as the Court holds, the “focus” of the SCA is privacy, and the relevant territorial locus of the privacy interest is where the customer’s protected content is stored, see Majority Op. at 39, the use of the SCA to compel the disclosure of any email-related records stored abroad is impermissibly extraterritorial, regardless of the category of information or disclosure order. 5