“warrant,” all of which lead us to conclude that an SCA warrant may reach only data
stored within United States boundaries. Our conclusion today also serves the interests
of comity that, as the MLAT process reflects, ordinarily govern the conduct of cross‐
boundary criminal investigations. Admittedly, we cannot be certain of the scope of the
obligations that the laws of a foreign sovereign—and in particular, here, of Ireland or
the E.U.—place on a service provider storing digital data or otherwise conducting
business within its territory. But we find it difficult to dismiss those interests out of
hand on the theory that the foreign sovereign’s interests are unaffected when a United
States judge issues an order requiring a service provider to “collect” from servers
located overseas and “import” into the United States data, possibly belonging to a
foreign citizen, simply because the service provider has a base of operations within the
United States.
Thus, to enforce the Warrant, insofar as it directs Microsoft to seize the contents
of its customer’s communications stored in Ireland, constitutes an unlawful
extraterritorial application of the Act.
CONCLUSION
We conclude that Congress did not intend the SCA’s warrant provisions to apply
extraterritorially. The focus of those provisions is protection of a user’s privacy
interests. Accordingly, the SCA does not authorize a U.S. court to issue and enforce an
SCA warrant against a United States‐based service provider for the contents of a
customer’s electronic communications stored on servers located outside the United
States. The SCA warrant in this case may not lawfully be used to compel Microsoft to
produce to the government the contents of a customer’s e‐mail account stored
exclusively in Ireland. Because Microsoft has otherwise complied with the Warrant, it
has no remaining lawful obligation to produce materials to the government.
42
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