New success in protecting customer rights unsealed today

As we move to the Cloud there are concerns around our position on government pressures regarding requests for customer data. We stand behind our commitment to our practice of notifying enterprise customers when we receive legal orders related to their data. A case in point occurred on 22 May 2014, when a federal court in Seattle unsealed documents related to Microsoft’s successful challenge of an FBI National Security Letter. The FBI’s letter sought basic subscriber information about an account belonging to one of our enterprise customers. In keeping with Microsoft’s public commitment to notify customers if we receive legal orders related to their data, we challenged the letter’s nondisclosure provision which would have prevented Microsoft from notifying the customer. FBI withdrew its letter after Microsoft’s challenge.

This case marks an important and successful step to protect Microsoft's customers from government surveillance and illustrates Microsoft’s commitment to our practice of notifying enterprise customers when we receive legal orders related to their data.  For more details on this, please see the blog post that provides context about our challenge and the result from Brad Smith, General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft. – Jon C. Arnold