A particular story that gained popularity last week has really caught my attention and got me thinking.  If you didn’t know a US Judge has just ordered Microsoft to release emails from servers stored in a foreign Datacentre (based in Ireland). The decision isn’t immediate and gives MS time to appeal, but it’s not looking good for those who think that data stored overseas is safe from the US government. This comes at a time when not many have forgotten about the revelations from Edward Snowden that the NSA and GCHQ have been helping themselves to all manner of data stored both abroad and locally.
As SharePoint people  – who are being encouraged to adopt Azure and Office 365 – what does this mean for you? Will this change the viewpoint of the organization that you are working in? If this US ruling sticks, what’s the future for global US Tech companies in general? Is this decision so big that it will stifle the development of Cloud Services? Or, is it something that will eventually be circumvented by those who can afford to implement a complex network of international companies that can operate under different jurisdictions.
Thoughts?
The US is trying to set a precedent where any company that does business in the US will fall entirely under US jurisdiction. The likely end result of this path is not that everyone reluctantly hands over all of their info to the states, but rather that big tech companies stop basing any of their operations in the US. It takes a pretty astounding level of arrogance to demand access to something so far outside of their jurisdiction.Â
