Microsoft’s got some more support today in its ongoing appeal and wider campaign against the U.S. government over how the latter requests customer data from the cloud, and specifically when the servers where the data is stored are located outside the U.S.. Verizon, HP, eBay, Cisco, Salesforce and Infor have come together to file an amicus brief in support of Microsoft’s position in the dispute over data stored on servers in Ireland, calling the U.S. government regulations “extraordinarily sweeping.”
The move today highlights how Microsoft’s fight is quickly becoming a test case for the wider tech industry.
The filing was made as the final flourish on a morning in which Microsoft held an event in New York to announce the third-party support.
While the companies represented in the brief note that they are not in the same business specifically as Microsoft, they are supporting Microsoft because they all have cloud components in their own businesses and could potentially be impacted by the same U.S. government rules and regulations.
One of the big issues for Microsoft (and the supporting companies) is that some of the U.S. government regulations directly conflict certain European laws.
