Microsoft Ups the Ante

[Minimalist]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/techno...c=rss&_r=0

Microsoft Sues U.S. Over Orders Barring It From Revealing Surveillance

In its suit, filed Thursday morning in Federal District Court in Seattle, Microsoft’s home turf, the company asserts that the gag order statute in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 — as employed today by federal prosecutors and the courts — is unconstitutional.
The statute, according to Microsoft, violates the Fourth Amendment right of its customers to know if the government searches or seizes their property, and it breaches the company’s First Amendment right to speak to its customers.
Microsoft’s suit, unlike Apple’s fight with the Federal Bureau of Investigation over access to a locked iPhone, is not attached to a single case. Instead, it is intended to challenge the legal process regarding secrecy orders.

Since "law enforcement" cannot be trusted one has to hope that Microsoft will get them reigned in.

[vorlon13]

My first impulse is to not side with Microsoft regardless of the issue, might have to rethink that, reluctantly.

A compromise springs to mind, Billy Gates does some hentai to balance out the cosmic dyna-flux.