[Domenic_S]

I always hate when folks make comparisons like this to the USPS for the simple reason that the USPS has reams of laws, codes, and statutes it is bound to follow, full-stop.

These codes explicitly outline how I should expect my mail to be handled by the USPS. They also explicitly define how 3rd parties are handled when they violate your mail. It's all very clear in black & white.

We have expectations of the USPS because of a codified standard. Breaking those expectations is a totally different scenario than the MS scenario.

[_delirium]

In some countries, email also has laws around it. My employer cannot read my email, even the email that sits on their servers in my employer-provided email account, except under specific circumstances dictated by law, with an oversight process dictated by law. YMMV. (There are exceptions for incidental access of email by technical staff for the purpose of making the email itself work, filtering spam, etc., vs. searching the contents and giving your boss a printout.)

There's an interesting intersection-of-laws issue. Our email is actually hosted by Microsoft Office 365. When Microsoft performs searches like this, do they touch multiple email accounts? If they ran the equivalent of a grep across their whole email infrastructure, they might violate Danish law in doing so, if their grep touched our mailboxes. So how they access email inboxes in general is something they ought to be pretty careful of. At the very least I hope they're making sure only to search Americans' inboxes, hosted on American servers.

[rfrank]

Earlier in this thread someone said, "Once your data is in someone else's cloud, you have no recourse."

As a more general matter, do you think that's the way it should be? Do you feel that your information no longer being yours once it touches someone else's server is the right way to do things?

[wetafur]

I don't think that should be the case, but the solution should be more awareness rather than regulation. People should realize that they're giving up something to get a free service or subsidized products like Chromebooks rather than government interfering. Restricting people from searching their own servers will solve nothing.

[esrauch]

It seems like it would solve at least one thing.