Google must share emails stored on foreign servers with FBI: US judge

A US judge ruled Friday that Google would need to comply with an FBI probe requiring access to emails stored on a foreign server.

US magistrate judge Thomas Rueter delivered the ruling, ordering Google to share the emails ought by the FBI. The ruling is the exact opposite of the one involving Microsoft, which, unlike Google, could not be forced to hand over emails stored on a server in Ireland, which was required in a case involving narcotics.

In the new case though, judge Rueter of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled that the transfer of emails culled from a foreign server for FBI agents's review did not qualify as a seizure, Reuters reported.

The judge reasoned that this was because there was no "meaningful interference" with the account holder's "possessory interest" in the data being probed as part of a domestic fraud case. According to the judge, while Google's retrieval of data from foreign servers might qualify as an act of privacy invasion, the actual infringement "occurs at the time of disclosure in the United States."

The ruling, however, was not unalterable, given that it had the potential to go against the precedent set last year as part of Microsoft's case, which had been much discussed in the media and by other tech companies, crusaders of privacy, and other institutions.

Meanwhile, Google has no plans to turn over the data and would fight to protect it

''The magistrate in this case departed from precedent, and we plan to appeal the decision. We will continue to push back on overbroad warrants,'' the company said in a statement given to Reuters yesterday.

According to commentators, the decision ran contrary to the decision in Microsoft's case in which a federal judge had ruled that Microsoft and other companies could not be forced to turn over customer emails stored on overseas servers to the FBI.