The Second Circuit’s challenge in considering the validity of a U.S. Stored Communications Act warrant to Microsoft for e-mails located on servers in Ireland involves interpreting the SCA, which was enacted nearly three decades ago, long before today’s Internet, cloud storage and huge amounts of data stored around the world, the author writes.

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral argument in September in a case concerning Microsoft Corp.'s refusal to comply with a government search warrant and hand-over the contents of customer emails stored on a server in Ireland, Judge Gerald E. Lynch ended the almost 90-minute argument with an unusual plea: ‘‘I do think the one thing that probably everyone agrees on is that, as so often, it would be helpful if Congress would engage in that kind of nuanced regulation, and we’ll all be holding our breaths for when they do.’’

Originally published in Bloomberg BNA's Privacy & Security Law Report on October 5th, 2015.