BSA Supports Microsoft Arguments on Customers NDA

BSA|The Software Alliance filed a brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit supporting Microsoft’s appeal of a nondisclosure order from the Eastern District of New York barring it from notifying anyone that it received a warrant for a business customer’s data. “Industry depends on the trust that customers place in cloud service providers to protect their data,” BSA said (in Pacer) in the brief, posted Tuesday in docket 20-3945. “To maintain that trust, when the Government demands a customer’s data, a cloud service provider must be allowed to notify the customer in all but the most unusual circumstances,’ BSA said. “Upholding nondisclosure orders that fail to meet First Amendment requirements, like the one at issue here, threatens to undermine the customer trust that is essential to the cloud services industry.” A group of former prosecutors from New York also supported (in Pacer) Microsoft. “New technologies should not be exempt from traditional constitutional safeguards,” they said: “The issuance of a § 2705(b) secrecy order must be justified by a specific and meaningful showing and must be narrowly tailored to promote a compelling government interest and be the least restrictive means of achieving that interest.”