Washington — On Monday, the US supreme court agreed to resolve a major privacy dispute between the justice department and Microsoft over whether prosecutors should get access to e-mails stored on company servers overseas. The justices will hear the Trump administration’s appeal against a lower court’s ruling in 2016, preventing federal prosecutors from obtaining e-mails stored in Microsoft computer servers in Dublin, Ireland, in a drug trafficking investigation. That decision by the New York-based 2nd US court of appeals marked a victory for privacy advocates and technology companies that increasingly offer cloud computing services in which data is stored remotely. Microsoft, which has 100 data centres in 40 countries, was the first US company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the country. There have been several similar challenges, most brought by Google. "If US law enforcement can obtain the e-mails of foreigners stored outside the US, what’s to stop...
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