14‐2985  Microsoft v  United States    United States Court of Appeals FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT  ______________     August Term  2015    Argued  September 9  2015          Decided   July 14  2016    Docket No  14‐2985    ______________     In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E‐Mail  Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft  Corporation  ______________     MICROSOFT CORPORATION       – v  –     UNITED STATES OF AMERICA         ______________   Appellant   Appellee   B  e  f  o  r  e          LYNCH and CARNEY  Circuit Judges  and BOLDEN  District Judge     ______________     Microsoft Corporation appeals from orders of the United States District Court for  the Southern District of New York  1  denying Microsoft’s motion to quash a warrant  “Warrant”  issued under the Stored Communications Act  18 U S C  §§ 2701 et seq  to  the extent that the orders required Microsoft to produce the contents of a customer’s e‐ mail account stored on a server located outside the United States  and  2  holding  Microsoft in civil contempt of court for its failure to comply with the Warrant   We  The Honorable Victor A  Bolden  of the United States District Court for the District of  Connecticut  sitting by designation   conclude that § 2703 of the Stored Communications Act does not authorize courts to  issue and enforce against U S ‐based service providers warrants for the seizure of  customer e‐mail content that is stored exclusively on foreign servers     REVERSED  VACATED  AND REMANDED      Judge Lynch concurs in a separate opinion   ______________    E  JOSHUA ROSENKRANZ  Orrick  Herrington   Sutcliffe LLP  Robert M  Loeb and Brian P  Goldman  Orrick   Herrington   Sutcliffe LLP  New York  NY  Guy  Petrillo  Petrillo Klein   Boxer LLP  New York  NY   James M  Garland and Alexander A  Berengaut   Covington   Burling LLP  Washington  DC  Bradford  L  Smith  David M  Howard  John Frank  Jonathan  Palmer  and Nathaniel Jones  Microsoft Corp   Redmond  WA  on the brief  for Microsoft Corporation      JUSTIN ANDERSON  Assistant United States Attorney  Serrin  Turner  Assistant United States Attorney  on the brief   for Preet Bharara  United States Attorney for the  Southern District of New York  New York  NY      Brett J  Williamson  David K  Lukmire  Nate Asher   O’Melveny   Myers LLP  New York  NY  Faiza Patel   Michael Price  Brennan Center for Justice  New York   NY  Hanni Fakhoury  Electronic Frontier Foundation   San Francisco  CA  Alex Abdo  American Civil  Liberties Union Foundation  New York  NY  for Amici  Curiae Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of  Law  American Civil Liberties Union  The  Constitution Project  and Electronic Frontier  Foundation  in support of Appellant     Kenneth M  Dreifach  Marc J  Zwillinger  Zwillgen PLLC   New York  NY and Washington  DC  for Amicus Curiae  Apple  Inc  in support of Appellant     2    Andrew J  Pincus  Paul W  Hughes  James F  Tierney  Mayer  Brown LLP  Washington  DC  for Amici Curiae BSA    The Software Alliance  Center for Democracy and  Technology  Chamber of Commerce of the United  States  The National Association of Manufacturers   and ACT   The App Association  in support of  Appellant     Steven A  Engel  Dechert LLP  New York  NY  for Amicus  Curiae Anthony J  Colangelo  in support of Appellant     Alan C  Raul  Kwaku A  Akowuah  Sidley Austin LLP   Washington  DC  for Amici Curiae AT T Corp   Rackspace US  Inc  Computer   Communications  Industry Association  i2 Coalition  and Application  Developers Alliance  in support of Appellant     Peter D  Stergios  Charles D  Ray  McCarter   English  LLP   New York  NY and Hartford  CT  for Amicus Curiae  Ireland     Peter Karanjia  Eric J  Feder  Davis Wright Tremaine LLP   New York  NY  for Amici Curiae Amazon com  Inc   and Accenture PLC  in support of Appellant     Michael Vatis  Jeffrey A  Novack  Steptoe   Johnson LLP   New York  NY   Randal S  Milch  Verizon  Communications Inc  New York  NY  Kristofor T   Henning  Hewlett‐Packard Co  Wayne  PA  Amy  Weaver  Daniel Reed  Salesforce com  Inc  San  Francisco  CA  Orin Snyder  Thomas G  Hungar   Alexander H  Southwell  Gibson  Dunn   Crutcher  LLP  New York  NY  Mark Chandler  Cisco Systems   Inc  San Jose  CA  Aaron Johnson  eBay Inc  San Jose   CA  for Amici Curiae Verizon Communications  Inc   Cisco Systems  Inc  Hewlett‐Packard Co  eBay Inc   Salesforce com  Inc  and Infor  in support of Appellant     3    Laura R  Handman  Alison Schary  Davis Wright Tremaine  LLP  Washington  DC  for Amici Curiae Media  Organizations  in support of Appellant     Philip Warrick  Klarquist Sparkman  LLP  Portland  OR  for  Amici Curiae Computer and Data Science Experts  in  support of Appellant     Owen C  Pell  Ian S  Forrester  Q C  Paige C  Spencer  White   Case  New York  NY  for Amicus Curiae Jan Philipp  Albrecht  Member of the European Parliament  in  support of Appellant     Owen C  Pell  Ian S  Forrester  Q C  Paige C  Spencer  White   Case  New York  NY  Edward McGarr  Simon  McGarr  Dervila McGarr  McGarr Solicitors  Dublin   Ireland  for Amicus Curiae Jan Philipp Albrecht   Member of the European Parliament  in support of  Appellant   ______________  SUSAN L  CARNEY  Circuit Judge     Microsoft Corporation appeals from orders of the United States District Court for  the Southern District of New York denying its motion to quash a warrant  “Warrant”   issued under § 2703 of the Stored Communications Act  “SCA” or the “Act”  18 U S C   §§ 2701 et seq  and holding Microsoft in contempt of court for refusing to execute the  Warrant on the government’s behalf   The Warrant directed Microsoft to seize and  produce the contents of an e‐mail account that it maintains for a customer who uses the  company’s electronic communications services   A United States magistrate judge  Francis  M J  issued the Warrant on the government’s application  having found  probable cause to believe that the account was being used in furtherance of narcotics    4  trafficking   The Warrant was then served on Microsoft at its headquarters in Redmond   Washington    Microsoft produced its customer’s non‐content information to the government   as directed   That data was stored in the United States   But Microsoft ascertained that   to comply fully with the Warrant  it would need to access customer content that it stores  and maintains in Ireland and to import that data into the United States for delivery to  federal authorities   It declined to do so   Instead  it moved to quash the Warrant   The  magistrate judge  affirmed by the District Court  Preska  C J  denied the motion to  quash and  in due course  the District Court held Microsoft in civil contempt for its  failure    Microsoft and the government dispute the nature and reach of the Warrant that  the Act authorized and the extent of Microsoft’s obligations under the instrument   For  its part  Microsoft emphasizes Congress’s use in the Act of the term “warrant” to  identify the authorized instrument   Warrants traditionally carry territorial limitations    United States law enforcement officers may be directed by a court‐issued warrant to  seize items at locations in the United States and in United States‐controlled areas  see  Fed  R  Crim  P  41 b  but their authority generally does not extend further    The government  on the other hand  characterizes the dispute as merely about  “compelled disclosure ” regardless of the label appearing on the instrument   It  maintains that “similar to a subpoena   an SCA warrant  requir es  the recipient to  deliver records  physical objects  and other materials to the government” no matter  where those documents are located  so long as they are subject to the recipient’s custody  or control   Gov’t Br  at 6   It relies on a collection of court rulings construing properly‐ served subpoenas as imposing that broad obligation to produce without regard to a  document’s location   E g  Marc Rich   Co  A G  v  United States  707 F 2d 663  2d Cir   1983            5  For the reasons that follow  we think that Microsoft has the better of the  argument   When  in 1986  Congress passed the Stored Communications Act as part of  the broader Electronic Communications Privacy Act  its aim was to protect user privacy  in the context of new technology that required a user’s interaction with a service  provider   Neither explicitly nor implicitly does the statute envision the application of  its warrant provisions overseas   Three decades ago  international boundaries were not  so routinely crossed as they are today  when service providers rely on worldwide  networks of hardware to satisfy users’ 21st–century demands for access and speed and  their related  evolving expectations of privacy     Rather  in keeping with the pressing needs of the day  Congress focused on  providing basic safeguards for the privacy of domestic users   Accordingly  we think it  employed the term “warrant” in the Act to require pre‐disclosure scrutiny of the  requested search and seizure by a neutral third party  and thereby to afford heightened  privacy protection in the United States   It did not abandon the instrument’s territorial  limitations and other constitutional requirements   The application of the Act that the  government proposes ― interpreting “warrant” to require a service provider to retrieve  material from beyond the borders of the United States ―would require us to disregard  the presumption against extraterritoriality that the Supreme Court re‐stated and  emphasized in Morrison v  National Australian Bank Ltd  561 U S  247  2010  and  just  recently  in RJR Nabisco  Inc  v  European Cmty  579 U S  __  2016 WL 3369423  June 20   2016   We are not at liberty to do so      We therefore decide that the District Court lacked authority to enforce the  Warrant against Microsoft   Because Microsoft has complied with the Warrant’s  domestic directives and resisted only its extraterritorial aspects  we REVERSE the  District Court’s denial of Microsoft’s motion to quash  VACATE its finding of civil  contempt  and REMAND the cause with instructions to the District Court to quash the    6  Warrant insofar as it directs Microsoft to collect  import  and produce to the government  customer content stored outside the United States   BACKGROUND  I Microsoft’s Web‐Based E‐mail Service  The factual setting in which this dispute arose is largely undisputed and is  established primarily by affidavits submitted by or on behalf of the parties     Microsoft Corporation is a United States business incorporated and  headquartered in Washington State   Since 1997  Microsoft has operated a “web‐based  e‐mail” service available for public use without charge   Joint Appendix  “J A ”  at 35   It  calls the most recent iteration of this service Outlook com 1  The service allows Microsoft  customers to send and receive correspondence using e‐mail accounts hosted by the  company   In a protocol now broadly familiar to the ordinary citizen  a customer uses a  computer to navigate to the Outlook com web address  and there  after logging in with  username and password  conducts correspondence electronically    Microsoft explains that  when it provides customers with web‐based access to  e‐mail accounts  it stores the contents of each user’s e‐mails  along with a variety of  non‐content information related to the account and to the account’s e‐mail traffic  on a  network of servers 2  The company’s servers are housed in datacenters operated by it  and its subsidiaries 3    The company inaugurated Outlook com in 2013 as a successor to Microsoft’s earlier  Hotmail com and MSN com services       2 A “server” is “a shared computer on a network that provides services to clients          An  Internet‐connected web server is  a  common example of a server  ”  Harry Newton   Steve  Schoen  Newton’s Telecom Dictionary 1084  28th ed  2014   “Newton’s Telecom Dictionary”        3 A “datacenter” is “ a  centralized location where computing resources  e g  host computers   servers  peripherals  applications  databases  and network access  critical to an organization are  maintained in a highly controlled physical environment  temperature  humidity  etc ”   1   7  Microsoft currently makes “enterprise cloud service offerings” available to  customers in over 100 countries through Microsoft’s “public cloud ”4   The service  offerings are “segmented into regions  and most customer data  e g  email  calendar  entries  and documents  is generally contained entirely within one or more data centers  in the region in which the customer is located ” J A  at 109   Microsoft generally stores a  customer’s e‐mail information and content at datacenters located near the physical  location identified by the user as its own when subscribing to the service   Microsoft  does so  it explains  “in part to reduce ‘network latency’” 5—i e  delay—inherent in  web‐based computing services and thereby to improve the user’s experience of its  service   J A  at 36–37   As of 2014  Microsoft “manage d  over one million server  computers in  its  datacenters worldwide  in over 100 discrete leased and owned  datacenter facilities  spread over 40 countries ” Id  at 109  These facilities  it avers  “host  more than 200 online services  used by over 1 billion customers and over 20 million  businesses worldwide ”  Id  at 109   One of Microsoft’s datacenters is located in Dublin  Ireland  where it is operated  by a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary   According to Microsoft  when its system  automatically determines  “based on  the user’s  country code ” that storage for an  e‐mail account “should be migrated to the Dublin datacenter ” it transfers the data  associated with the account to that location   Id  at 37   Before making the transfer  it  Newton’s Telecom Dictionary at 373     4 The Supreme Court has recently described “ c loud computing” as “the capacity of Internet‐ connected devices to display data stored on remote servers rather than on the device itself ”   Riley v  California  134 S  Ct  2473  2491  2014       5 Microsoft explains network latency as “the principle of network architecture that the greater  the geographical distance between a user and the datacenter where the user’s data is stored  the  slower the service ” J A  at 36       8  does not verify user identity or location  it simply takes the user‐provided information  at face value  and its systems migrate the data according to company protocol     Under practices in place at the time of these proceedings  once the transfer is  complete  Microsoft deletes from its U S ‐based servers “all content and non‐content  information associated with the account in the United States ” retaining only three data  sets in its U S  facilities   Id  at 37   First  Microsoft stores some non‐content e‐mail  information in a U S ‐located “data warehouse” that it operates “for testing and quality  control purposes ”  Id   Second  it may store some information about the user’s online  address book in a central “address book clearing house” that it maintains in the United  States   Third  it may store some basic account information  including the user’s name  and country  in a U S ‐sited database   Id  at 37–38       Microsoft asserts that  after the migration is complete  the “only way to access”  user data stored in Dublin and associated with one of its customer’s web‐based e‐mail  accounts is “from the Dublin datacenter ” Id  at 37   Although the assertion might be  read to imply that a Microsoft employee must be physically present in Ireland to access  the user data stored there  this is not so   Microsoft acknowledges that  by using a  database management program that can be accessed at some of its offices in the United  States  it can “collect” account data that is stored on any of its servers globally and bring  that data into the United States   Id  at 39–40       II Procedural History  On December 4  2013  Magistrate Judge James C  Francis IV of the United States  District Court for the Southern District of New York issued the “Search and Seizure  Warrant” that became the subject of Microsoft’s motion to quash       9  Although the Warrant was served on Microsoft  its printed boilerplate language  advises that it is addressed to “ a ny authorized law enforcement officer ” Id  at 44   It  commands the recipient to search “ t he PREMISES known and described as the email  account  redacted @MSN COM  which is controlled by Microsoft Corporation ”6  Id   It  requires the “officer executing  the  warrant  or an officer present during the execution  of the warrant” to “prepare an inventory        and promptly return  the  warrant and  inventory to the Clerk of the Court ”  Id     Its Attachment A  “Property To Be Searched ” provides  “This warrant applies to  information associated with  redacted @msn com  which is stored at premises owned   maintained  controlled  or operated by Microsoft Corporation        ” Id  at 45    Attachment C  “Particular Things To Be Seized ”7 directs Microsoft to disclose to the  government  “for the period of inception of the account to the present ” and “ t o the  extent that the information       is within the possession  custody  or control of MSN  redacted ” id  the following information    a  “The contents of all e‐mails stored in the account  including copies of e‐mails  sent from the account”    b  “All records or other information regarding the identification of the account ”  including  among other things  the name  physical address  telephone numbers   session times and durations  log‐in IP addresses  and sources of payment  associated with the account    c  “All records or other information stored by an individual using the account   including address books  contact and buddy lists  pictures  and files”  and   d  “All records pertaining to communications between MSN  redacted  and any  person regarding the account  including contacts with support services and  records of actions taken ”      The name of the e‐mail address associated with the account is subject to a sealing order and  does not bear on our analysis     7 Although the Warrant includes an Attachment A and C  it appears to have no Attachment B      6   10  J A  46–47  8    After being served with the Warrant  Microsoft determined that the e‐mail  contents stored in the account were located in its Dublin datacenter   Microsoft  disclosed all other responsive information  which was kept within the United States   and moved the magistrate judge to quash the Warrant with respect to the user content  stored in Dublin    As we have recounted  the magistrate judge denied Microsoft’s motion to quash    In a Memorandum and Order  he concluded that the SCA authorized the District Court  to issue a warrant for “information that is stored on servers abroad ” In re Warrant to  Search a Certain E‐Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation  15 F   Supp  3d 466  477  S D N Y  2014   “In re Warrant”   He observed that he had found  probable cause for the requested search  and that the Warrant was properly served on  Microsoft in the United States   He noted that  inasmuch as an SCA warrant is served on  a service provider rather than on a law enforcement officer  it “is executed like a  subpoena in that it       does not involve government agents entering the premises of the  ISP  Internet service provider  to search its servers and seize the e‐mail account in  question ”  Id  at 471   Accordingly  he determined that Congress intended in the Act’s  warrant provisions to import obligations similar to those associated with a subpoena to  “produce information in its possession  custody  or control regardless of the location of  that information ”  Id  at 472  citing Marc Rich  707 F 2d at 667   While acknowledging  that Microsoft’s analysis in favor of quashing the Warrant with respect to foreign‐stored  customer content was “not inconsistent with the statutory language ” he saw  Microsoft’s position as “undermined by the structure of the SCA  its legislative history ”   The Warrant also describes in Attachment C techniques that would be used  presumably by  the government  not Microsoft  “to search the seized e‐mails for evidence of the specified  crime ” J A  at 47    8   11  and “by the practical consequences that would flow from adopting it ”  He therefore  concluded that Microsoft was obligated to produce the customer’s content  wherever it  might be stored   He also treated the place where the government would review the  content  the United States  not the place of storage  Ireland  as the relevant place of  seizure   Microsoft appealed the magistrate judge’s decision to Chief Judge Loretta A   Preska  who  on de novo review and after a hearing  adopted the magistrate judge’s  reasoning and affirmed his ruling from the bench   In re Warrant to Search a Certain  E‐Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation  1 13‐mj‐02814  S D N Y  filed Dec  4  2013  ECF No  80  order reflecting ruling made at oral  argument    Microsoft timely noticed its appeal of the District Court’s decision denying the  motion to quash   Not long after  the District Court acted on a stipulation submitted  jointly by the parties and held Microsoft in civil contempt for refusing to comply fully  with the Warrant 9  Id  at ECF No  92   Microsoft timely amended its notice of appeal to  reflect its additional challenge to the District Court’s contempt ruling    We now reverse the District Court’s denial of Microsoft’s motion to quash  vacate  the finding of contempt  and remand the case to the District Court with instructions to   As reflected in their stipulation  Microsoft and the government agreed to the contempt finding  to ensure our Court’s appellate jurisdiction over their dispute   See United States v  Punn  737 F 3d  1  5  2d Cir  2013   noting general rule that contempt finding needed before ruling denying  motion to quash is sufficiently “final” to support appellate jurisdiction   Because Microsoft  timely appealed the contempt ruling  we need not decide whether we would have had  jurisdiction over an appeal taken directly from the denial of the motion to quash   See United  States v  Constr  Prods  Research  Inc  73 F 3d 464  468–69  2d Cir  1996   noting exception to  contempt requirement as basis for appellate jurisdiction in context of third party subpoena  issued in administrative investigation      9   12  quash the Warrant insofar as it calls for production of customer content stored outside  the United States     III Statutory Background    The Warrant was issued under the provisions of the Stored Communications Act   legislation enacted as Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986    Before we begin our analysis  some background will be useful     A     The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986  The Electronic Communications Privacy Act  “ECPA”  became law in 1986 10  As  it is summarized by the Department of Justice  ECPA “updated the Federal Wiretap Act  of 1968  which addressed interception of conversations using ‘hard’ telephone lines  but  did not apply to interception of computer and other digital and electronic  communications ”11  ECPA’s Title II is also called the Stored Communications Act  “SCA”   The Act “protects the privacy of the contents of files stored by service   Electronic Communications Privacy Act  Pub  L  99‐508  100 Stat  1848  1848–73  1986   codified as amended at 18 U S C  §§ 2510 et seq  18 U S C  §§ 2701 et seq  and 18 U S C  §§ 3121  et seq         11 U S  Dep’t of Justice  Office of Justice Programs  Bureau of Justice Assistance  Electronic  Communications Privacy Act of 1986  Justice Information Sharing   https it ojp gov privacyliberty authorities statutes 1285  last visited May 12  2016   The  Department advises that the acronym “ECPA” is commonly used to refer to the three titles of  ECPA as a group  Titles I  II  and III of Pub  L  99‐508   Id   Title I “prohibits the intentional  actual or attempted interception  use  disclosure  or procurement of any other person” to  intercept wire  oral  or electronic transmissions  Title II is the Stored Communications Act   discussed in the text  Title III “addresses pen register and trap and trace devices ” requiring  government entities to obtain a court order authorizing their installation   Id   Title I and III are  codified at 18 U S C  §§ 2510‐22  Title II is codified at 18 U S C  §§ 2701‐12  and constitutes  chapter 121 of Title 18     10   13  providers and of records held about the subscriber by service providers ” according to  the Justice Department 12   We discuss its provisions further below     B     The Technological Setting in 1986  When it passed the Stored Communications Act almost thirty years ago   Congress had as reference a technological context very different from today’s Internet‐ saturated reality   This context affects our construction of the statute now     One historian of the Internet has observed that “before 1988  the New York Times  mentioned the Internet only once—in a brief aside ”  Roy Rosenzweig  Wizards   Bureaucrats  Warriors  and Hackers  Writing the History of the Internet  103 Am  Hist  Rev   1530  1530  1998   The TCP IP data transfer protocol—today  the standard for online  communication—began to be used by the Department of Defense in about 1980   See  Leonard Kleinrock  An Early History of the Internet  IEEE Commc’ns Mag  26  35  Aug   2010   The World Wide Web was not created until 1990  and we did not even begin  calling it that until 1993   Daniel B  Garrie   Francis M  Allegra  Plugged In  Guidebook to  Software and the Law § 3 2  2015 ed   Thus  a globally‐connected Internet available to the  general public for routine e‐mail and other uses was still years in the future when  Congress first took action to protect user privacy   See Craig Partridge  The Technical  Development of Internet Email  IEEE Annals of the Hist  of Computing 3  4  Apr ‐June  2008       C     The Stored Communications Act   As the government has acknowledged in this litigation  “ t he SCA was enacted  to extend to electronic records privacy protections analogous to those provided by the  12  See supra note 11     14  Fourth Amendment ” Gov’t Br  at 29  citing S  Comm  on Judiciary  Electronic  Communications Privacy Act of 1986  S  Rep  No  99‐541  at 5  1986   The SCA  provides privacy protection for users of two types of electronic services—electronic  communication services  “ECS”  and remote computing services  “RCS” —then  probably more distinguishable than now 13  See Orin S  Kerr  A User’s Guide to the Stored  Communications Act  and a Legislator’s Guide to Amending It  72 Geo  Wash  L  Rev  1208   1213–14  2004   An ECS generally operated by providing the user access to a central  computer system through which to send electronic messages over telephone lines    S  Rep  No  99‐541  at 8   If the intended recipient also subscribed to the service  the  provider temporarily stored the message in the recipient’s electronic “mail box” until  the recipient “call ed  the company to retrieve its mail ”  Id   If the intended recipient  was not a subscriber  the service provider could print the communication on paper and  complete delivery by postal service or courier   Id  U S  Congress  Office of Technology  Assessment  OTA‐CIT‐293  Federal Government Information Technology  Electronic  Surveillance and Civil Liberties 47–48  1985 14   An RCS generally operated either by  providing customers with access to computer processing facilities in a “time‐sharing  arrangement ” or by directly processing data that a customer transmitted electronically  to the provider by means of electronic communications  and transmitting back the  requested results of particular operations   S  Rep  No  99‐541  at 10–11   We will refer to   See 18 U S C  § 2510 15   in ECPA Title I  defining “electronic communications service” as  “any service which provides to users thereof the ability to send or receive wire or electronic  communications”  § 2711 2   in ECPA Title II  the SCA  defining “remote computing service” as  “the provision to the public of computer storage or processing services by means of an  electronic communications system”       14 For example  in 1984  Federal Express entered the e‐mail market with a service that provided  for two‐hour delivery of facsimile copies of e‐mail messages up to five pages in length   U S   Congress  Office of Technology Assessment  Electronic Surveillance and Civil Liberties  at 47       13   15  Microsoft and other providers of ECS and RCS jointly as “service providers ” except  where the distinction makes a difference   As to both services  the Act imposes general obligations of non‐disclosure on  service providers and creates several exceptions to those obligations   Thus  its initial  provision  § 2701  prohibits unauthorized third parties from  among other things   obtaining or altering electronic communications stored by an ECS  and imposes  criminal penalties for its violation   Section 2702 restricts the circumstances in which  service providers may disclose information associated with and contents of stored  communications to listed exceptions  such as with the consent of the originator or upon  notice to the intended recipient  or pursuant to § 2703   Section 2703 then establishes  conditions under which the government may require a service provider to disclose the  contents of stored communications and related obligations to notify a customer whose  material has been accessed  Section 2707 authorizes civil actions by entities aggrieved  by violations of the Act  and makes “good faith reliance” on a court warrant or order “a  complete defense ”  18 U S C  § 2707 e 15  Regarding governmental access in particular  § 2703 sets up a pyramidal  structure governing conditions under which service providers must disclose stored  communications to the government   Basic subscriber and transactional information can  be obtained simply with an administrative subpoena 16  18 U S C  § 2703 c 2   Other   Other provisions of the Act address  among other things  preservation of backup data  § 2704   delaying notice to a customer whose information has been accessed  § 2705  cost  reimbursement for assembling data demanded under the Act  § 2706  and exclusivity of  remedies that the Act provides to a person aggrieved by its violation  § 2708     16 An “administrative subpoena” is “a subpoena issued by an administrative agency to compel  an individual to provide information to the agency ”  Administrative subpoena  Black’s Law  Dictionary  10th ed  2014  To obtain such a subpoena  the government need not demonstrate  probable cause   See EEOC v  United Parcel Serv  Inc  587 F 3d 136  139‐40  2d Cir  2009     15   16  non‐content records can be obtained by a court order  a “§ 2703 d  order”  which may  be issued only upon a statement of “specific and articulable facts showing        reasonable grounds to believe that the contents or records       are relevant and material  to an ongoing criminal investigation ”  § 2703 c 2   d   The government may also  obtain some user content with an administrative subpoena or a § 2703 d  order  but  only if notice is provided to the service provider’s subscriber or customer   § 2703 b 1 B   To obtain “priority stored communications”  our phrase  as described  below  the Act generally requires that the government first secure a warrant that has  been issued “using the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal  Procedure ” or using State warrant procedures  both of which require a showing of  probable cause  17  Priority stored communications fall into two categories   For   Thus  § 2703  “Required disclosure of customer communications or records ” provides in part  as follows   a   Contents  of  wire  or  electronic  communications  in  electronic  storage ―A  governmental  entity  may  require  the  disclosure  by  a  provider  of  electronic  communication  service  of  the  contents  of  a  wire or  electronic  communication   that  is in  electronic storage in  an  electronic communications system for one hundred and eighty days  or  less   only  pursuant  to  a  warrant  issued  using  the  procedures  described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure  or  in the case  of a State court  issued using State warrant procedures  by a court of  competent  jurisdiction     A  governmental  entity  may  require  the  disclosure by a provider of electronic communications services of the  contents  of  a  wire  or  electronic  communication  that  has  been  in  electronic  storage  in  an  electronic  communication  system  for  more  than  one  hundred  and  eighty  days  by  the  means  available  under  subsection  b  of this section     b   Contents  of  wire  or  electronic  communications  in  a  remote  computing  service — 1   A  governmental  entity  may  require  a  provider of remote computing service to disclose the contents of any  wire  or  electronic  communication  to  which  this  paragraph  is  made  applicable by paragraph  2  of this subsection—    17   17  electronic communications stored recently  that is  for less than 180 days  by an ECS  the  government must obtain a warrant   § 2703 a   For older electronic communications and  those held by an RCS  a warrant is also required  unless the Government is willing to  provide notice to the subscriber or customer   § 2703 b 1 A      As noted  § 2703 calls for those warrants issued under its purview by federal  courts to be “issued using the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal  Procedure ” Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure  entitled “Search and  Seizure ” addresses federal warrants   It directs “the magistrate judge or a judge of a  state court of record” to issue the warrant to “an officer authorized to execute it ” Rule  41 e 1   And insofar as territorial reach is concerned  Rule 41 b  describes the extent of  A  without required notice to the subscriber or customer  if the  governmental  entity  obtains  a  warrant  issued  using  the  procedures  described  in  the  Federal  Rules  of  Criminal  Procedure  or   in  the  case  of  a  State  court   issued  using  State  warrant procedures  by a court of competent jurisdiction  or    B   with  prior  notice  from  the  governmental  entity  to  the  subscriber or customer if the governmental entity—  i   uses  an  administrative  subpoena  authorized  by  a  Federal or State statute or a Federal or State grand jury or  trial subpoena  or    ii   obtains  a  court  order  for  such  disclosure  under  subsection  d   of  this  section   except  that  delayed  notice  may be given pursuant to section 2705 of this title            g  Presence of officer not required ‐‐Notwithstanding section 3105  of  this  title   the  presence  of  an  officer  shall  not  be  required  for  service or execution of a search warrant issued in accordance with  this  chapter  requiring  disclosure  by  a  provider  of  electronic  communications  service  or  remote  computing  service  of  the  contents  of  communications  or  records  or  other  information  pertaining to a subscriber to or customer of such service       18  the power of various authorities  primarily United States magistrate judges  to issue  warrants with respect to persons or property located within a particular federal judicial  district   It also allows magistrate judges to issue warrants that may be executed outside  of the issuing district  but within another district of the United States   Fed  R  Crim  P   41 b 2   b 3   Rule 41 b 5  generally restricts the geographical reach of a warrant’s  execution  if not in another federal district  to “a United States territory   possession  or  commonwealth ” and various diplomatic or consular missions of the United States or  diplomatic residences of the United States located in a foreign state       DISCUSSION  I Standard of Review  We will vacate a finding of civil contempt that rests on a party’s refusal to  comply with a court order if we determine that the district court relied on a mistaken  understanding of the law in issuing its order   United States ex rel  Touhy v  Ragen  340  U S  462  464–70  1951   Similarly  we will vacate a district court’s denial of a motion to  quash if we conclude that the denial rested on a mistake of law 18  See In re Subpoena  Issued to Dennis Friedman  350 F 3d 65  68–69  2d Cir  2003   It is on the legal predicate for the District Court’s rulings―its analysis of the  Stored Communications Act  in particular  and of the principles of construction set forth  by the Supreme Court in Morrison v  National Australian Bank Ltd  561 U S  247  2010 ―  that we focus our attention in this appeal    Our Court has not squarely held what standard governs our review of a district court’s denial  of a motion to quash and its related contempt finding   We need not dwell long on this  threshold question  however  because even a deferential abuse‐of‐discretion review  incorporates a de novo examination of the district court’s rulings of law  such as we conduct  here   See  e g  In re Grand Jury Subpoena Issued June 18  2009  593 F 3d 155  157  2d Cir  2010        18   19  II Whether the SCA Authorizes Enforcement of the Warrant as to Customer  Content Stored in Ireland  A   Analytic Framework  The parties stand far apart in the analytic frameworks that they present as  governing this case   Adopting the government’s view  the magistrate judge denied Microsoft’s  motion to quash  resting on the legal conclusion that an SCA warrant is more akin to a  subpoena than a warrant  and that a properly served subpoena would compel  production of any material  including customer content  so long as it is stored at  premises “owned  maintained  controlled  or operated by Microsoft Corporation ”  In re  Warrant  15 F  Supp  3d at 468  quoting Warrant   The fact that those premises were  located abroad was  in the magistrate judge’s view  of no moment   Id  at 472      Microsoft offers a different conception of the reach of an SCA warrant   It  understands such a warrant as more closely resembling a traditional warrant than a  subpoena   In its view  a warrant issued under the Act cannot be given effect as to  materials stored beyond United States borders  regardless of what may be retrieved  electronically from the United States and where the data would be reviewed   To  enforce the Warrant as the government proposes would effect an unlawful  extraterritorial application of the SCA  it asserts  and would work an unlawful intrusion  on the privacy of Microsoft’s customer   Although electronic data may be more mobile  and may seem less concrete  than  many materials ordinarily subject to warrants  no party disputes that the electronic data  subject to this Warrant were in fact located in Ireland when the Warrant was served    None disputes that Microsoft would have to collect the data from Ireland to provide it  to the government in the United States   As to the citizenship of the customer whose    20  e‐mail content was sought  the record is silent   For its part  the SCA is silent as to the  reach of the statute as a whole and as to the reach of its warrant provisions in particular      Finally  the presumption against extraterritorial application of United States statutes is  strong and binding   See Morrison  561 U S  at 255   In these circumstances  we believe we  must begin our analysis with an inquiry into whether Congress  in enacting the warrant  provisions of the SCA  envisioned and intended those provisions to reach outside of the  United States   If we discern that it did not  we must assess whether the enforcement of  this Warrant constitutes an unlawful extraterritorial application of the statute    We thus  begin with a brief review of Morrison  which outlines the operative principles     B   Morrison and the Presumption Against Extraterritoriality  When interpreting the laws of the United States  we presume that legislation of  Congress “is meant to apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States ”  unless a contrary intent clearly appears   Id  at 255  internal quotation marks omitted   see also RJR Nabisco  Inc  v  European Cmty  579 U S  __  __  2016 WL 3369423  at  7  June  20  2016   This presumption rests on the perception that “Congress ordinarily legislates  with respect to domestic  not foreign matters ”  Id   The presumption reflects that  Congress  rather than the courts  has the “facilities necessary” to make policy decisions  in the “delicate field of international relations ”  Kiobel v  Royal Dutch Petroleum Co  133  S  Ct  1659  1664  2013   quoting Benz v  Compania Naviera Hidalgo  S A  353 U S  138  147  1957   In line with this recognition  the presumption is applied to protect against  “unintended clashes between our laws and those of other nations which could result in  international discord ”  Equal Emp’t Opportunity Comm’n v  Arabian American Oil Co  499  U S  244  248  1991   “Aramco”  see generally Park Central Global Hub Ltd  v  Porsche Auto   Holdings SE  763 F 3d 198  2d Cir  2014   per curiam      21  To decide whether the presumption limits the reach of a statutory provision in a  particular case  “we look to see whether ‘language in the  relevant Act  gives any  indication of a congressional purpose to extend its coverage beyond places over which  the United States has sovereignty or has some measure of legislative control ’”  Aramco   499 U S  at 248  alteration in original   quoting Foley Bros  Inc  v  Filardo  336 U S  281   285  1949   The statutory provision must contain a “clear indication of an  extraterritorial application”  otherwise  “it has none ”  Morrison  561 U S  at 255  see also  RJR Nabisco  579 U S  at __  2016 WL 3369423  at  7    Following the approach set forth in Morrison  our inquiry proceeds in two parts    We first determine whether the relevant statutory provisions contemplate  extraterritorial application   Id  at 261–65   If we conclude that they do not  by  identifying the statute’s focus and looking at the facts presented through that prism  we  then assess whether the challenged application is “extraterritorial” and therefore  outside the statutory bounds   Id  at 266–70     C     Whether the SCA’s Warrant Provisions Contemplate Extraterritorial  Application  We dispose of the first question with relative ease   The government conceded at  oral argument that the warrant provisions of the SCA do not contemplate or permit  extraterritorial application 19  Our review of the statute confirms the soundness of this  concession       When asked  “What text in the Stored Communications Act do you point to  to support your  assertion that       Congress intended extraterritorial application ”  the government responded   “There’s no extraterritorial application here at all ”  Recording of Oral Argument at 1 06 40– 1 07 00   Later  when Judge Lynch observed  “I take it that suggests that the government actually  agrees that there shall not be extraterritorial application of the Stored Communications Act        what this dispute is about is about the focus of the statute and what counts as an extraterritorial  19   22      1   Plain Meaning of the SCA  As observed above  the SCA permits the government to require service providers  to produce the contents of certain priority stored communications “only pursuant to a  warrant issued using the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal  Procedure  or  in the case of a State court  issued using State warrant procedures  by a  court of competent jurisdiction ”  18 U S C  § 2703 a   b 1 a   The provisions in § 2703  that permit a service provider’s disclosure in response to a duly obtained warrant do  not mention any extraterritorial application  and the government points to no provision  that even implicitly alludes to any such application   No relevant definition provided by  either Title I or Title II of ECPA  see 18 U S C  §§ 2510  2711  suggests that Congress  envisioned any extraterritorial use for the statute   When Congress intends a law to apply extraterritorially  it gives an “affirmative  indication” of that intent   Morrison  561 U S  at 265   It did so  for example  in the  statutes at issue in Weiss v  National Westminster Bank PLC  768 F 3d 202  207   n 5  2d  Cir  2014   concluding that definition of “international terrorism” within 18 U S C   § 2331 1  covers extraterritorial conduct because Congress referred to acts that “occur  primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States”  and United States v   Weingarten  632 F 3d 60  65  2d Cir  2011   concluding that 18 U S C  § 2423 b  applies to  extraterritorial conduct because it criminalizes “travel in foreign commerce undertaken  with the intent to commit sexual acts with minors” that would violate United States law  had the acts occurred in the jurisdiction of the United States   We see no such indication  in the SCA   application of the statute ” the government answered  “That’s right  Judge ”  Id  at 1 25 38– 1 26 05     23  We emphasize further that under § 2703  any “court of competent  jurisdiction”―defined in § 2711 3 B  to include “a court of general criminal jurisdiction  of a State authorized by the law of that State to issue search warrants”―may issue an  SCA warrant   Section 2703 a  refers directly to the use of State warrant procedures as  an adequate basis for issuance of an SCA warrant   18 U S C  § 2703 a   We think it  particularly unlikely that  if Congress intended SCA warrants to apply extraterritorially   it would provide for such far‐reaching state court authority without at least  “address ing  the subject of conflicts with foreign laws and procedures ”  Aramco  499  U S  at 256  see also American Ins  Ass’n v  Garamendi  539 U S  396  413  2003   describing  as beyond dispute the notion that “state power that touches on foreign relations must  yield to the National Government’s policy”        The government asserts that “ n othing in the SCA’s text  structure  purpose  or  legislative history indicates that compelled production of records is limited to those  stored domestically ”  Gov’t Br  at 26  formatting altered and emphasis added   It  emphasizes the requirement placed on a service provider to disclose customers’ data   and the absence of any territorial reference restricting that obligation   We find this  argument unpersuasive   It stands the presumption against extraterritoriality on its  head   It further reads into the Act an extraterritorial awareness and intention that strike  us as anachronistic  and for which we see  and the government points to  no textual or  documentary support  20       Seeking additional grounds for its position that to apply Morrison in this case is to proceed on  a false premise  the government argues that the presumption against extraterritoriality applies  only to “substantive provisions” of United States law  and that the SCA’s warrant provisions are  procedural   Gov’t Br  at 31   The proposition that the SCA’s protections are merely procedural  might reasonably be questioned   But even assuming that they are procedural  the government  gains no traction with this argument  which we rejected in Loginovskaya v  Batratchenko  764 F 3d  266  272‐73  2d Cir  2014     20   24  2       The SCA’s Use of the Term of Art “Warrant”  Congress’s use of the term of art “warrant” also emphasizes the domestic  boundaries of the Act in these circumstances   In construing statutes  we interpret a legal term of art in accordance with the  term’s traditional legal meaning  unless the statute contains a persuasive indication that  Congress intended otherwise   See F A A  v  Cooper  132 S  Ct  1441  1449  2012   “ W hen  Congress employs a term of art  ‘it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas  that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was  taken ’”   quoting Molzof v  United States  502 U S  301  307  1992   “Warrant” is such a  term of art    The term is endowed with a legal lineage that is centuries old   The importance of  the warrant as an instrument by which the power of government is exercised and  constrained is reflected by its prominent appearance in the Fourth Amendment to the  United States Constitution   The  right  of  the  people  to  be  secure  in  their  persons   houses   papers   and  effects   against  unreasonable  searches  and  seizures   shall  not  be  violated   and  no  Warrants  shall  issue   but  upon  probable  cause   supported  by  Oath  or  affirmation   and  particularly  describing  the  place  to  be  searched   and  the  persons  or things to be seized     U S  Const  amend  IV   It is often observed that “ t he chief evil that prompted the  framing and adoption of the Fourth Amendment was the indiscriminate searches and  seizures conducted by the British under the authority of general warrants ”  United  States v  Galpin  720 F 3d 436  445  2d Cir  2013   internal quotation marks omitted    Warrants issued in accordance with the Fourth Amendment thus identify discrete  objects and places  and restrict the government’s ability to act beyond the warrant’s    25  purview ― of particular note here  outside of the place identified  which must be  described in the document   Id  at 445–46       As the term is used in the Constitution  a warrant is traditionally moored to  privacy concepts applied within the territory of the United States   “What we know of  the history of the drafting of the Fourth Amendment       suggests that its purpose was  to restrict searches and seizures which might be conducted by the United States in  domestic matters ” In re Terrorist Bombings of U S  Embassies in East Africa  552 F 3d 157   169  2d Cir  2008   alteration omitted and ellipses in original   quoting United States v   Verdugo‐Urquidez  494 U S  259  266  1990   Indeed  “if U S  judicial officers were to  issue search warrants intended to have extraterritorial effect  such warrants would have  dubious legal significance  if any  in a foreign nation ”  Id  at 171  Accordingly  a  warrant protects privacy in a distinctly territorial way 21  The SCA’s legislative history related to its post enactment amendments supports  our conclusion that Congress intended to invoke the term “warrant” with all of its  traditional  domestic connotations 22  Since the SCA’s initial passage in 1986  Congress  has amended § 2703 to relax some of the Rule 41 requirements as they relate to SCA  warrants   Although some address the reach of SCA warrants  none of the amendments   The government argues that the SCA’s warrant provisions were “modeled after the Right to  Financial Privacy Act ” 12 U S C  §§ 3402 3  3406  and that the latter act also “envisions that  warrants—along with subpoenas and summonses—will trigger a disclosure requirement ”   Gov’t Br  at 19  citing S  Rep  No  99‐541  at 3   It points to no authority definitively construing  the latter act’s warrant provisions  however  nor any acknowledgment in the history of the SCA  that enforcement of the warrant’s disclosure commands would cross international boundaries    For these reasons  we accord little weight to the observation     22 We note that a 2009 amendment to Rule 41 expressly authorizes the use of such warrants to  seize electronically‐stored data  without abandoning the requirement that the warrant specify  the place from which the data is to be seized   See Fed  R  Crim  P  41 e 2 B   allowing  magistrate judge to “authorize the seizure of electronic storage media or the seizure or copying of  electronically stored information”  emphasis added   21   26  contradicts the term’s traditional domestic limits   See USA PATRIOT ACT  Pub  L   107‐56  § 220  115 Stat  272  291–92  2001   codified at 18 U S C  § 2703 a   b  21st  Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act  Pub  L  107‐273   § 11010  116 Stat  1758  1822  2002   codified at 18 U S C  § 2703 g  Foreign Evidence  Request Efficiency Act of 2009  Pub  L  111‐79  § 2  123 Stat  2086  2086  2009   codified at  18 U S C  § 2711 3 A   These amendments to the SCA are fully consistent with the  historical role of warrants as legal instruments that pertain to discrete objects located  within the United States  and that are designed to protect U S  citizens’ privacy  interests   The magistrate judge took a different view of the legislative history of certain  amendments to the SCA   He took special notice of certain legislative history related to  the 2001 amendment to the warrant provisions enacted in the USA PATRIOT ACT   A  House committee report explained that “ c urrently  Federal Rules  sic  of Criminal  Procedure 41 requires that the ‘warrant’ be obtained ‘within the district’ where the  property is located   An investigator  for example  located in Boston       might have to  seek a suspect’s electronic e‐mail from an Internet service provider  ISP  account located  in California ”  In re Warrant  15 F  Supp  3d at 473  quoting H R  Rep  107‐236 I  at 57  2001   The magistrate judge reasoned that this statement equated the location of  property with the location of the service provider  and not with the location of any  server   Id  at 474      But this excerpt says nothing about the need to cross international boundaries   rather  while noting the “cross‐jurisdictional nature of the Internet ” it discusses only  amendments to Rule 41 that allow magistrate judges “within the district” to issue  warrants to be executed in other “districts”—not overseas   Id  at 473  quoting H R  Rep   107‐236 I  at 58   Furthermore  the Committee discussion reflects no expectation that  the material to be searched and seized would be located any place other than where the    27  service provider is located   Thus  the Committee’s hypothetical focuses on a situation  in which an investigator in Boston might seek e‐mail from “an Internet service provider  ISP  account located in California ”  To our reading  the Report presumes that the  service provider is located where the account is—within the United States 23     3   Relevance of Law on “Subpoenas”  We reject the approach  urged by the government and endorsed by the District  Court  that would treat the SCA warrant as equivalent to a subpoena   The District  Court characterized an SCA warrant as a “hybrid” between a traditional warrant and a  subpoena because—generally unlike a warrant—it is executed by a service provider  rather than a government law enforcement agent  and because it does not require the  presence of an agent during its execution   Id  at 471  18 U S C  § 2703 a ‐ c   g   As  flagged earlier  the subpoena‐warrant distinction is significant here because  unlike  warrants  subpoenas may require the production of communications stored overseas    15 F  Supp  3d at 472  citing Marc Rich  707 F 2d at 667    Warrants and subpoenas are  and have long been  distinct legal instruments 24    Section 2703 of the SCA recognizes this distinction and  unsurprisingly  uses the   Our brief discussion here of the law of warrants is offered in aid only of our interpretation of  the statutory language   Consequently  we do not consider whether the Fourth Amendment  might be understood to impose disclosure‐related procedural requirements more stringent than  those established by the SCA   See United States v  Warshak  631 F 3d 266  288  6th Cir  2010   finding Fourth Amendment protects certain electronic communications based on users’  reasonable expectations of privacy  see also Email Privacy Act  H  R  699  114th Cong  § 3  passed by House Apr  27  2016   requiring government to obtain warrant before obtaining  documents stored online     24 A “subpoena”  from the Latin phrase meaning “under penalty ”  is “ a  writ or order  commanding a person to appear before a court or other tribunal  subject to a penalty for failing  to comply ” Subpoena  Black’s Law Dictionary   Relatedly  a “subpoena duces tecum” directs the  person served to bring with him “specified documents  records  or things ”  Subpoena duces  23   28  “warrant” requirement to signal  and to provide  a greater level of protection to priority  stored communications  and “subpoenas” to signal  and provide  a lesser level   18  U S C  § 2703 a   b 1 A   Section 2703 does not use the terms interchangeably   Id    Nor does it use the word “hybrid” to describe an SCA warrant   Indeed  § 2703 places  priority stored communications entirely outside the reach of an SCA subpoena  absent  compliance with the notice provisions   Id   The term “subpoena ” therefore  stands  separately in the statute  as in ordinary usage  from the term “warrant ”   We see no  reasonable basis in the statute from which to infer that Congress used “warrant” to  mean “subpoena ”    Furthermore  contrary to the Government’s assertion  the law of warrants has  long contemplated that a private party may be required to participate in the lawful  search or seizure of items belonging to the target of an investigation   When the  government compels a private party to assist it in conducting a search or seizure  the  private party becomes an agent of the government  and the Fourth Amendment’s  warrant clause applies in full force to the private party’s actions   See Coolidge v  New  Hampshire  403 U S  443  487  1971  Gambino v  United States  275 U S  310  316–17  1927   see also Cassidy v  Chertoff  471 F 3d 67  74  2d Cir  2006   The SCA’s warrant provisions  fit comfortably within this scheme by requiring a warrant for the content of stored  communications even when the warrant commands a service provider  rather than a  law enforcement officer  to access the communications   18 U S C  § 2703 a   b 1 A   g   Use of this mechanism does not signal that  notwithstanding its use of the term  tecum  Black’s Law Dictionary   In contrast  a “warrant” is a “writ directing or authorizing  someone to do an act  such as  one directing a law enforcer to make       a search  or a seizure ”   Warrant  Black’s Law Dictionary   As to search warrants  the place is key   A search warrant is a  “written order authorizing a law‐enforcement officer to conduct a search of a specified place ”   Search Warrant  Black’s Law Dictionary        29  “warrant ” Congress intended the SCA warrant procedure to function like a traditional  subpoena   We see no reason to believe that Congress intended to jettison the centuries  of law requiring the issuance and performance of warrants in specified  domestic  locations  or to replace the traditional warrant with a novel instrument of international  application     The government nonetheless urges that the law of subpoenas relied on by the  magistrate judge requires a subpoena’s recipient to produce documents no matter  where located  and that this aspect of subpoena law should be imported into the SCA’s  warrant provisions   The government argues that “subpoenas  orders  and warrants are  equally empowered to obtain records       through a disclosure requirement directed at a  service provider ”  Gov’t Br  at 18–19   It further argues that disclosure in response to an  SCA warrant should not be read to reach only U S ‐located documents  but rather all  records available to the recipient   Id  at 26–27      In this  the government rests on our 1983 decision in Marc Rich   There  we  permitted a grand jury subpoena issued in a tax evasion investigation to reach the  overseas business records of a defendant Swiss commodities trading corporation   The  Marc Rich Court clarified that a defendant subject to the personal jurisdiction of a  subpoena‐issuing grand jury could not “resist the production of  subpoenaed   documents on the ground that the documents are located abroad ”  707 F 2d at 667   The  federal court had subject‐matter jurisdiction over the foreign defendant’s actions  pursuant to the “territorial principle ” which allows governments to punish an  individual for acts outside their boundaries when those acts are “intended to produce  and do produce detrimental effects within it ”  Id  at 666   In investigating such a case   the Court concluded  the grand jury necessarily had authority to obtain evidence  related to the foreign conduct  even when that evidence was located abroad   Id  at 667    For that reason  as long as the Swiss corporation was subject to the grand jury’s    30  personal jurisdiction—which the Court concluded was the case—the corporation was  bound by its subpoena   Id   Thus  in Marc Rich  a subpoena could reach documents  located abroad when the subpoenaed foreign defendant was being compelled to turn  over its own records regarding potential illegal conduct  the effects of which were felt in  the United States     Contrary to the government’s assertion  neither Marc Rich nor the statute gives  any firm basis for importing law developed in the subpoena context into the SCA’s  warrant provisions   Microsoft convincingly observes that our Court has never upheld  the use of a subpoena to compel a recipient to produce an item under its control and  located overseas when the recipient is merely a caretaker for another individual or  entity and that individual  not the subpoena recipient  has a protectable privacy interest  in the item 25  Appellant’s Br  at 42–43   The government does not identify  and our  review of this Court’s precedent does not reveal  any such cases    The government also cites  and the District Court relied on  a series of cases in  which banks have been required to comply with subpoenas or discovery orders  requiring disclosure of their overseas records  notwithstanding the possibility that   The government contends that Microsoft has waived the argument that the government  cannot compel production of records that Microsoft holds on its customers’ behalf   Gov’t Br  at  36   n 14    But in the District Court proceedings  Microsoft argued that there was a “difference  between  on the one hand asking a company for its own documents       versus when you are  going after someone else’s documents       that are entrusted to us on behalf of our clients ”  Transcript of Oral Argument at 17  In re Warrant  1 13‐mj‐02814  ECF No  93   Although this was  not the centerpiece of Microsoft’s argument before the District Court  it was sufficiently raised    And in any event  we are free to consider arguments made on appeal in the interests of justice  even when they were not raised before the district court   See Gibeau v  Nellis  18 F 3d 107  109  2d  Cir  1994   The government has had an ample opportunity to rebut Microsoft’s position  and we  see no reason to treat this important argument as beyond our consideration     25   31  compliance would conflict with their obligations under foreign law 26  But the Supreme  Court has held that bank depositors have no protectable privacy interests in a bank’s  records regarding their accounts   See United States v  Miller  425 U S  435  440–41  1976   explaining that the records a bank creates from the transactions of its depositors are the  bank’s “business records” and not its depositors’ “private papers”   Thus  our 1968  decision in United States v  First National City Bank poses no bar to Microsoft’s argument    There  we held that a bank subject to the jurisdiction of a federal court was not  absolutely entitled to withhold from a grand jury subpoena its banking records held in  Frankfurt  Germany “relating to any transaction in the name of  or for the benefit of ”  certain foreign customers solely because the bank faced the prospect of civil liability    396 F 2d 897  898  901  905  2d Cir  1968  cf  Linde v  Arab Bank  PLC  706 F 3d 92  101–02   109  2d Cir  2013   declining to issue writ of mandamus overturning district court’s  imposition of sanctions on foreign bank  when bank was civil defendant and refused to  comply with discovery orders seeking certain foreign banking records We therefore conclude that Congress did not intend the SCA’s warrant  provisions to apply extraterritorially      D   Discerning the “Focus” of the SCA  This conclusion does not resolve the merits of this appeal  however  because “it is  a rare case of prohibited extraterritorial application that lacks all contact with the  territory of the United States ”  Morrison  561 U S  at 266   When we find that a law does   Thus  in addition to Marc Rich  the government refers us to other cases that it characterizes as  ordering production despite potential or certain conflict with the laws of other nations   In re  Grand Jury Proceedings  Bank of Nova Scotia  740 F 2d 817  826–29  11th Cir  1984  United States v   Vetco Inc  691 F 2d 1281  1287–91  9th Cir  1981  In re Grand Jury Subpoena Dated August 9  2000   218 F  Supp  2d 544  547  564  S D N Y  2002   Chin  J  United States v  Chase Manhattan Bank   N A  584 F  Supp  1080  1086–87  S D N Y  1984   Gov’t Br  at 16–17     26   32  not contemplate or permit extraterritorial application  we generally must then  determine whether the case at issue involves such a prohibited application   Id at 266– 67   As we recently observed in Mastafa v  Chevron Corp  “An evaluation of the  presumption’s application to a particular case is essentially an inquiry into whether the  domestic contacts are sufficient to avoid triggering the presumption at all ” 770 F 3d  170  182  2d Cir  2014     In making this second‐stage determination  we first look to the “territorial events  or relationships” that are the “focus” of the relevant statutory provision   Id  at 183  alterations and internal quotation marks omitted   If the domestic contacts presented  by the case fall within the “focus” of the statutory provision or are “the objects of the  statute’s solicitude ” then the application of the provision is not unlawfully  extraterritorial   Morrison  561 U S  at 267   If the domestic contacts are merely  secondary  however  to the statutory “focus ” then the provision’s application to the  case is extraterritorial and precluded    In identifying the “focus” of the SCA’s warrant provisions  it is helpful to resort  to the familiar tools of statutory interpretation  considering the text and plain meaning  of the statute  see  e g  Gottlieb v  Carnival Corp  436 F 3d 335  337  2d Cir  2006  as well  as its framework  procedural aspects  and legislative history   Cf  Morrison  561 U S  at  266–70  looking to text and statutory context to discern focus of statutory provision   Loginovskaya  764 F 3d at 272–73  analyzing text  context  and precedent to discern focus  for Morrison purposes   Having done so  we conclude that the relevant provisions of  the SCA focus on protecting the privacy of the content of a user’s stored electronic  communications   Although the SCA also prescribes methods under which the  government may obtain access to that content for law enforcement purposes  it does so  in the context of a primary emphasis on protecting user content ― the “object  of the  statute’s solicitude ”  Morrison  561 U S  at 267     33     1   The SCA’s Warrant Provisions  The reader will recall the SCA’s provisions regarding the production of  electronic communication content   In sum  for priority stored communications  “a  governmental entity may require the disclosure       of the contents of a wire or  electronic communication       only pursuant to a warrant issued using the rules  described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure ” except  in certain cases  if notice  is given to the user   18 U S C  § 2703 a   b   In our view  the most natural reading of this language in the context of the Act  suggests a legislative focus on the privacy of stored communications   Warrants under  § 2703 must issue under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure  whose Rule 41 is  undergirded by the Constitution’s protections of citizens’ privacy against unlawful  searches and seizures   And more generally  § 2703’s warrant language appears in a  statute entitled the Electronic Communications Privacy Act  suggesting privacy as a key  concern     The overall effect is the embodiment of an expectation of privacy in those  communications  notwithstanding the role of service providers in their transmission  and storage  and the imposition of procedural restrictions on the government’s  and  other third party  access to priority stored communications   The circumstances in  which the communications have been stored serve as a proxy for the intensity of the  user’s privacy interests  dictating the stringency of the procedural protection they  receive—in particular whether the Act’s warrant provisions  subpoena provisions  or its  § 2703 d  court order provisions govern a disclosure desired by the government    Accordingly  we think it fair to conclude based on the plain meaning of the text that the  privacy of the stored communications is the “object  of the statute’s solicitude ” and the  focus of its provisions   Morrison  561 U S  at 267     34    2   Other Aspects of the Statute  In addition to the text’s plain meaning  other aspects of the statute confirm its  focus on privacy   As we have noted  the first three sections of the SCA contain its major  substantive provisions   These sections recognize that users of electronic  communications and remote computing services hold a privacy interest in their stored  electronic communications   In particular  § 2701 a  makes it unlawful to “intentionally  access  without authorization ” or “intentionally exceed  an authorization to access ” a  “facility through which an electronic communication service is provided” and “thereby  obtain  alter  or prevent  authorized access to a wire or electronic communication  while it is in electronic storage ”  Contrary to the government’s contention  this section  does more than merely protect against the disclosure of information by third parties    By prohibiting the alteration or blocking of access to stored communications  this  section also shelters the communications’ integrity   Section 2701 thus protects the  privacy interests of users in many aspects of their stored communications from  intrusion by unauthorized third parties   Section 2702 generally prohibits providers from “knowingly divulg ing ” the  “contents” of a communication that is in electronic storage subject to certain  enumerated exceptions   18 U S C  § 2702 a   Sections 2701 and 2702 are linked by their  parallel protections for communications that are in electronic storage   Section 2703  governs the circumstances in which information associated with stored  communications may be disclosed to the government  creating the elaborate hierarchy  of privacy protections that we have described       35  From this statutory framework we find further reason to conclude that the SCA’s  focus lies primarily on the need to protect users’ privacy interests   The primary  obligations created by the SCA protect the electronic communications   Disclosure is  permitted only as an exception to those primary obligations and is subject to conditions  imposed in § 2703   Had the Act instead created  for example  a rebuttable presumption  of law enforcement access to content premised on a minimal showing of legitimate  interest  the government’s argument that the Act’s focus is on aiding law enforcement  and disclosure would be stronger   Cf  Morrison  561 U S  at 267   But this is not what the  Act does   The SCA’s procedural provisions further support our conclusion that the Act  focuses on user privacy   As noted above  the SCA expressly adopts the procedures set  forth in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure   18 U S C  § 2703 a   b 1 A   Rule 41   which governs the issuance of warrants  reflects the historical understanding of a  warrant as an instrument protective of the citizenry’s privacy   See Fed  R  Crim  P  41    Further  the Act provides criminal penalties for breaches of those privacy interests and  creates civil remedies for individuals aggrieved by a breach of their privacy that  violates the Act   See 18 U S C  §§ 2701  2707   These all buttress our sense of the Act’s  focus   We find unpersuasive the government’s argument  alluded to above  that the  SCA’s warrant provisions must be read to focus on “disclosure” rather than privacy  because the SCA permits the government to obtain by mere subpoena the content of  e‐mails that have been held in ECS storage for more than 180 days   Gov’t Br  at 28–29  see  18 U S C  § 2703 a   In this vein  the government submits that reading the SCA’s  warrant provisions to focus on the privacy of stored communications instead of  disclosure would anomalously place newer e‐mail content stored on foreign servers  “beyond the reach of the statute entirely ” while older e‐mail content stored on foreign    36  servers could be obtained simply by subpoena  if notice is given to the user   Gov’t Br  at  29   This argument assumes  however  that a subpoena issued to Microsoft under the  SCA’s subpoena provisions would reach a user’s e‐mail content stored on foreign  servers   Although our Court’s precedent regarding the foreign reach of subpoenas  and  Marc Rich in particular  might suggest this result  the protections rightly accorded user  content in the face of an SCA subpoena have yet to be delineated   Today  we need not  determine the reach of the SCA’s subpoena provisions  because we are faced here only  with the lawful reach of an SCA warrant   Certainly  the service provider’s role in  relation to a customer’s content supports the idea that persuasive distinctions might be  drawn between it and other categories of subpoena recipients   See supra note 23   In light of the plain meaning of the statutory language and the characteristics of  other aspects of the statute  we conclude that its privacy focus is unmistakable     3   Legislative History  We consult the Act’s legislative history to test our conclusion   In enacting the SCA  Congress expressed a concern that developments in  technology could erode the privacy interest that Americans traditionally enjoyed in  their records and communications   See S  Rep  No  99‐541  at 3  “With the advent of  computerized recordkeeping systems  Americans have lost the ability to lock away a  great deal of personal and business information ”  H R  Rep  No  99‐647  at 19  1986   “ M ost important  if Congress does not act to protect the privacy of our citizens  we  may see the gradual erosion of a precious right ”   In particular  Congress noted that  the actions of private parties were largely unregulated when it came to maintaining the  privacy of stored electronic communications   See S  Rep  No  99‐541  at 3  H R  Rep  No   99‐647  at 18   And Congress observed further that recent Supreme Court precedent    37  called into question the breadth of the protection to which electronic records and  communications might be entitled under the Fourth Amendment   See S  Rep  No  99‐ 541  at 3  citing United States v  Miller  425 U S  435  1976  for proposition that because  records and private correspondence in computing context are “subject to control by a  third party computer operator  the information may be subject to no constitutional  privacy protection”  H R  Rep  No  99‐647  at 23  citing Miller for proposition that  “under current law a subscriber or customer probably has very limited rights to assert  in connection with the disclosure of records held or maintained by remote computing  services”     Accordingly  Congress set out to erect a set of statutory protections for stored  electronic communications   See S  Rep  No  99‐541  at 3  H R  Rep  No  99‐647  at 19   In  regard to governmental access  Congress sought to ensure that the protections  traditionally afforded by the Fourth Amendment extended to the electronic forum   See  H R  Rep  No  99‐647  at 19  “Additional legal protection is necessary to ensure the  continued vitality of the Fourth Amendment ”   It therefore modeled § 2703 after its  understanding of the scope of the Fourth Amendment   As the House Judiciary  Committee explained in its report  it appeared likely to the Committee that “the courts  would find that the parties to an e‐mail transmission have a ‘reasonable expectation of  privacy’ and that a warrant of some kind is required ”  Id  at 22   We believe this legislative history tends to confirm our view that the Act’s  privacy provisions were its impetus and focus   Although Congress did not overlook  law enforcement needs in formulating the statute  neither were those needs the primary  motivator for the enactment   See S  Rep  No  99‐541  at 3  in drafting SCA  Senate  Judiciary Committee sought “to protect privacy interests in personal and proprietary  information  while protecting the Government’s legitimate law enforcement needs”     38  Taken as a whole  the legislative history tends to confirm our view that the focus  of the SCA’s warrant provisions is on protecting users’ privacy interests in stored  communications     E   Extraterritoriality of the Warrant  Having thus determined that the Act focuses on user privacy  we have little  trouble concluding that execution of the Warrant would constitute an unlawful  extraterritorial application of the Act   See Morrison  561 U S  at 266–67  RJR Nabisco  579  U S  at __  2016 WL 3369423  at  9     The information sought in this case is the content of the electronic  communications of a Microsoft customer   The content to be seized is stored in Dublin    J A  at 38   The record is silent regarding the citizenship and location of the customer    Although the Act’s focus on the customer’s privacy might suggest that the customer’s  actual location or citizenship would be important to the extraterritoriality analysis  it is  our view that the invasion of the customer’s privacy takes place under the SCA where  the customer’s protected content is accessed—here  where it is seized by Microsoft   acting as an agent of the government 27  Because the content subject to the Warrant is  located in  and would be seized from  the Dublin datacenter  the conduct that falls  within the focus of the SCA would occur outside the United States  regardless of the  customer’s location and regardless of Microsoft’s home in the United States 28  Cf  Riley   We thus disagree with the magistrate judge that all of the relevant conduct occurred in the  United States   See In re Warrant  15 F  Supp  3d at 475–76     28 The concurring opinion suggests that the privacy interest that is the focus of the statute may  not be intrinsically related to the place where the private content is stored  and that an emphasis  on place is “suspect when the content consists of emails stored in the ‘cloud ’”  Concurring Op   at 14 n 7   But even messages stored in the “cloud” have a discernible physical location   Here   27   39  v  California  134 S  Ct  2473  2491  2014   noting privacy concern triggered by possibility  that search of arrestee’s cell phone may inadvertently access data stored on the “cloud ”  thus extending “well beyond papers and effects in the physical proximity” of the  arrestee     The magistrate judge suggested that the proposed execution of the Warrant is not  extraterritorial because “an SCA Warrant does not criminalize conduct taking place in a  foreign country  it does not involve the deployment of American law enforcement  personnel abroad  it does not require even the physical presence of service provider  employees at the location where data are stored          I t places obligations only on the  service provider to act within the United States ”  In re Warrant  15 F  Supp  3d at 475– 76   We disagree   First  his narrative affords inadequate weight to the facts that the data  is stored in Dublin  that Microsoft will necessarily interact with the Dublin datacenter in  order to retrieve the information for the government’s benefit  and that the data lies  within the jurisdiction of a foreign sovereign   Second  the magistrate judge’s  observations overlook the SCA’s formal recognition of the special role of the service  provider vis‐à‐vis the content that its customers entrust to it   In that respect  Microsoft  is unlike the defendant in Marc Rich and other subpoena recipients who are asked to  turn over records in which only they have a protectable privacy interest     The government voices concerns that  as the magistrate judge found  preventing  SCA warrants from reaching data stored abroad would place a “substantial” burden on  the government and would “seriously impede ” law enforcement efforts   Id  at 474    we know that the relevant data is stored at a datacenter in Dublin  Ireland   In contrast  it is  possible that the identity  citizenship  and location of the user of an online communication  account could be unknown to the service provider  the government  and the official issuing the  warrant  even when the government can show probable cause that a particular account contains  evidence of a crime      40  The magistrate judge noted the ease with which a wrongdoer can mislead a service  provider that has overseas storage facilities into storing content outside the United  States   He further noted that the current process for obtaining foreign‐stored data is  cumbersome   That process is governed by a series of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties  “MLATs”  between the United States and other countries  which allow signatory states  to request one another’s assistance with ongoing criminal investigations  including  issuance and execution of search warrants   See U S  Dep’t of State  7 Foreign Affairs  Manual  FAM  § 962 1  2013  available at fam state gov FAM 07FAM 07FAM0960 html  last visited May 12  2016   discussing and listing MLATs 29 And he observed that  for  countries with which it has not signed an MLAT  the United States has no formal tools  with which to obtain assistance in conducting law enforcement searches abroad 30    These practical considerations cannot  however  overcome the powerful clues in  the text of the statute  its other aspects  legislative history  and use of the term of art   The United States has entered into an MLAT with all member states of the European Union   including Ireland   See Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance Between the European Union  and the United States of America  June 25  2003  T I A S  No  10‐201 1     30 In addition  with regard to the foreign sovereign’s interest  the District Court described § 442  1 a  of the Restatement of Foreign Relations Law as “dispositive ”  Tr  of Oral Arg  supra note  25  at 69   That section provides     A court or agency in the United States  when authorized by statute  or  rule  of  court   is  empowered  to   order  a  person  subject  to  its  jurisdiction  to  produce  documents   objects   or  other  information  relevant  to  an  action  or  investigation   even  if  the  information  or  the person in possession of the information is outside the United  States      Restatement of Foreign Relations Law  3d  § 442 1 a   1987   We are not persuaded   The  predicate for the Restatement’s conclusion is that the court ordering production of materials  located outside the United States is “authorized by statute or rule of court” to do so   Whether  such a statute―the SCA―can fairly be read to authorize the production sought is precisely the  question before us 29   41  “warrant ” all of which lead us to conclude that an SCA warrant may reach only data  stored within United States boundaries   Our conclusion today also serves the interests  of comity that  as the MLAT process reflects  ordinarily govern the conduct of cross‐ boundary criminal investigations   Admittedly  we cannot be certain of the scope of the  obligations that the laws of a foreign sovereign—and in particular  here  of Ireland or  the E U —place on a service provider storing digital data or otherwise conducting  business within its territory   But we find it difficult to dismiss those interests out of  hand on the theory that the foreign sovereign’s interests are unaffected when a United  States judge issues an order requiring a service provider to “collect” from servers  located overseas and “import” into the United States data  possibly belonging to a  foreign citizen  simply because the service provider has a base of operations within the  United States     Thus  to enforce the Warrant  insofar as it directs Microsoft to seize the contents  of its customer’s communications stored in Ireland  constitutes an unlawful  extraterritorial application of the Act     CONCLUSION  We conclude that Congress did not intend the SCA’s warrant provisions to apply  extraterritorially   The focus of those provisions is protection of a user’s privacy  interests   Accordingly  the SCA does not authorize a U S  court to issue and enforce an  SCA warrant against a United States‐based service provider for the contents of a  customer’s electronic communications stored on servers located outside the United  States   The SCA warrant in this case may not lawfully be used to compel Microsoft to  produce to the government the contents of a customer’s e‐mail account stored  exclusively in Ireland   Because Microsoft has otherwise complied with the Warrant  it  has no remaining lawful obligation to produce materials to the government       42  We therefore REVERSE the District Court’s denial of Microsoft’s motion to  quash  we VACATE its order holding Microsoft in civil contempt of court  and we  REMAND this cause to the District Court with instructions to quash the warrant insofar  as it demands user content stored outside of the United States     43  GERARD E LYNCH Circuit Judge concurring in the judgment I am in general agreement with the Court’s conclusion that in light of the presumption against extraterritorial application of congressional enactments the Stored Communications Act “SCA” or the “Act” should not on the record made by the government below be construed to require Microsoft to turn over records of the content of emails stored on servers in Ireland I write separately to clarify what in my view is at stake and not at stake in this case to explain why I believe that the government’s arguments are stronger than the Court’s opinion acknowledges and to emphasize the need for congressional action to revise a badly outdated statute I An undercurrent running through Microsoft’s and several of its amici’s briefing is the suggestion that this case involves a government threat to individual privacy I do not believe that that is a fair characterization of the stakes in this dispute To uphold the warrant here would not undermine basic values of privacy as defined in the Fourth Amendment and in the libertarian traditions of this country As the majority correctly points out the SCA presents a tiered set of requirements for government access to electronic communications and information relating to them Although Congress adopted the Act in order to provide some privacy protections to such communications see H R Rep No 99-647 at 21–23 1986 S Rep No 99-541 at 3 1986 those requirements are in many ways less protective of privacy than many might think appropriate See e g United States v Warshak 631 F 3d 266 288 6th Cir 2010 holding that the SCA violates the Fourth Amendment to the extent that it allows government agents to obtain the contents of emails without a warrant 1 Orin S Kerr A User’s Guide to the Stored Communications Act and a Legislator’s Guide to Amending It 72 Geo Wash L Rev 1208 1214 2004 emphasizing that “ t he SCA is not a catch-all statute designed to protect the privacy of stored Internet communications” and that “there are many problems of Internet privacy that the SCA does not address” But this case does not require us to address those arguable defects in the statute That is because in this case the government complied with the most restrictive privacy-protecting requirements of the Act Those requirements are consistent with the highest level of protection ordinarily required by the Fourth Amendment for the issuance of search warrants a demonstration by the government to an independent judicial officer that evidence presented on oath justifies the conclusion that there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that evidence of such crime can be found in the communications sought by the government That point bears significant emphasis In this case the government proved to the satisfaction of a judge that a reasonable person would believe that the records sought contained evidence of a crime That is the showing that the framers of our Bill of Rights believed was sufficient to support the issuance of search warrants U S Const amend IV “ N o Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause ” In other words in the ordinary domestic law enforcement context if the government had made an equivalent showing that evidence of a crime could be found in a citizen’s home that showing would permit a judge to authorize law enforcement agents to forcibly enter that home and search every area of the home to locate the 1 In the wake of Warshak it has apparently been the policy of the Department of Justice since 2013 always to use warrants to require the disclosure of the contents of emails under the SCA even when the statute permits lesser process H R Rep No 114-528 at 9 2016 2 evidence in question and even if documentary or electronic evidence was sought to rummage through file cabinets and to seize and examine the hard drives of computers or other electronic devices That is because the Constitution protects “ t he right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects” not absolutely but only “against unreasonable searches and seizures ” id emphasis added and strikes the balance between the protection of privacy and the needs of law enforcement by requiring in most cases a warrant supported by a judicial finding of probable cause before the most intrusive of searches can take place See e g Riley v California 134 S Ct 2473 2482 2014 Congress of course is free to impose even stricter requirements on specific types of searches – and it has occasionally done so for example in connection with the real-time interception of communications as in wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping See 18 U S C § 2518 3 a permitting the approval of wiretap applications only in connection with investigations of certain enumerated crimes id § 2518 3 c requiring that a judge find that “normal investigative procedures have been tried and have failed or reasonably appear to be unlikely to succeed if tried or to be too dangerous” before a wiretap application can be approved But it has not done so for permitting government access to any category of stored electronic communications and Microsoft does not challenge the constitutional adequacy of the protections provided by the Act to those communications Put another way Microsoft does not argue here that if the emails sought by the government were stored on a server at its headquarters in Redmond Washington there would be any constitutional obstacle to the government’s acquiring them by the same means that it used in this case Indeed as explained above the showing made by the government would support a warrant that permitted agents to forcibly enter those headquarters and seize the server itself 3 I emphasize these points to clarify that Microsoft’s argument is not that the government does not have sufficiently solid information and sufficiently important interests to justify invading the privacy of the customer whose emails are sought and acquiring records of the contents of those emails Microsoft does not ask the Court to create as a matter of constitutional law stricter safeguards on the protection of those emails – and the Court does not do so Rather the sole issue involved is whether Microsoft can thwart the government’s otherwise justified demand for the emails at issue by the simple expedient of choosing – in its own discretion – to store them on a server in another country That discretion raises another point about privacy Under Microsoft’s and the Court’s interpretation of the SCA the privacy of Microsoft’s customers’ emails is dependent not on the traditional constitutional safeguard of private communications – judicial oversight of the government’s conduct of criminal investigations – but rather on the business decisions of a private corporation The contract between Microsoft and its customers does not limit the company’s freedom to store its customers’ emails wherever it chooses and if Microsoft chooses for whatever reasons of profit or cost control to repatriate the emails at issue here to a server in United States there will be no obstacle to the government’s obtaining them As the Court points out Microsoft does in fact choose to locate the records of anyone who says that he or she resides in the United States on domestic servers It is only foreign customers and those Americans who say that they reside abroad who gain any enhanced protection from the Court’s holding And that protection is not merely enhanced it is absolute the government can never obtain a warrant that would require Microsoft to turn over those emails however certain it may be that they 4 contain evidence of criminal activity and even if that criminal activity is a terrorist plot 2 Or to be more precise the customer’s privacy in that case is absolute as against the government her privacy is protected against Microsoft only to the extent defined by the terms of her adhesion contract with the company Reasonable people might conclude that extremely stringent safeguards ought to apply to government investigators’ acquisition of the contents of private email communications and that the provisions of the SCA as applied domestically should be enhanced to provide even greater privacy at an even higher cost to criminal investigations Other reasonable people might conclude that at least in some cases investigators should have freer access to stored communications It is the traditional task of Congress in enacting legislation and of the courts in interpreting the Fourth Amendment to strike a balance between privacy interests and law enforcement needs But neither privacy interests nor the needs of law enforcement vary depending on whether a private company chooses to store records here or abroad – particularly when the “records” are electronic zeros and ones that can be moved around the world in seconds and will be so moved whenever it suits the convenience or commercial purposes of the company The issue facing the Court then is not actually about the need to enhance privacy protections for information that Americans choose to store in the “cloud ” 2 Although the Court does not reach the question its opinion strongly suggests that that protection is absolute in the further sense that it applies also to less-protected categories of information otherwise reachable by the SCA’s other disclosure-compelling instruments – subpoenas and court orders If as the Court holds the “focus” of the SCA is privacy and the relevant territorial locus of the privacy interest is where the customer’s protected content is stored see Majority Op at 39 the use of the SCA to compel the disclosure of any email-related records stored abroad is impermissibly extraterritorial regardless of the category of information or disclosure order 5 II In emphasizing the foregoing I do not for a moment mean to suggest that this case is not important or that significant non-privacy interests may not justify a congressional decision to distinguish records stored domestically from those stored abroad It is important to recognize however that the dispute here is not about privacy but rather about the international reach of American law That question is important in its own right and some further clarifications are in order about the division of responsibility between the courts and Congress in addressing it The courts have a significant role in the protection of privacy because the Constitution sets limits on what even the elected representatives of the people can authorize when it comes to searches and seizures Specifically the courts have an independent responsibility to interpret the Fourth Amendment an explicit check on Congress’s power to authorize unreasonable searches What searches are unreasonable is of course a difficult question particularly when courts are assessing statutory authorizations of novel types of searches to deal with novel types of threat In that context courts need to be especially cautious and respectful of the judgments of Congress See e g ACLU v Clapper 785 F 3d 787 824–25 2d Cir 2015 But it is ultimately the courts’ responsibility to ensure that constitutional restraints on searches and seizures are respected Whether American law applies to conduct occurring abroad is a different type of question That too is sometimes a difficult question It will often be tempting to attempt to protect American interests by extending the reach of American law and undertaking to regulate conduct that occurs beyond our borders But there are significant practical and policy limitations on the desirability of doing so We live in a system of independent sovereign nations in which other countries have their own ideas sometimes at odds with ours and their own legitimate 6 interests The attempt to apply U S law to conduct occurring abroad can cause tensions with those other countries most easily appreciated if we consider the likely American reaction if France or Ireland or Saudi Arabia or Russia proclaimed its right to regulate conduct by Americans within our borders But the decision about whether and when to apply U S law to actions occurring abroad is a question that is left entirely to Congress See Benz v Compania Naviera Hidalgo S A 353 U S 138 147 1957 Congress “alone has the facilities necessary to make fairly the important policy decision” whether a statute applies extraterritorially No provision of the Constitution limits Congress’s power to apply its laws to Americans or to foreigners abroad and Congress has on occasion done so expressly or by clear implication The courts’ job is simply to do their best to understand what Congress intended Where Congress has clearly indicated that a law applies extraterritorially as for example in 18 U S C § 2332 a which prohibits the murder of U S citizens abroad the courts apply the law as written See RJR Nabisco Inc v European Cmty 579 U S __ __ 2016 WL 3369423 at 9–10 June 20 2016 We do the same when a law clearly applies only domestically The latter situation is far more common so common that it is the ordinary presumption When Congress makes it a crime to “possess a controlled substance ” 21 U S C § 844 a it does not say that it is a crime to possess dangerous or addictive drugs in the United States It speaks absolutely as if proclaiming a universal rule but we understand that the law applies only here it does not prohibit the possession of marijuana by a Dutchman or even by an American in the Netherlands “Congress generally legislates with domestic concerns in mind ” RJR Nabisco 2016 WL 3369423 at 8 quoting Smith v United States 507 U S 197 204 n 5 1993 and so 7 unless Congress clearly indicates to the contrary we presume that statutes have only domestic effect I have little trouble agreeing with my colleagues that the SCA does not have extraterritorial effect As the Supreme Court recently made clear in RJR Nabisco the presumption applies not only to statutes that straightforwardly regulate or criminalize conduct but also to jurisdictional procedural and remedial statutes Id at 15–16 see also Loginovskaya v Batratchenko 764 F 3d 266 272 2d Cir 2014 rejecting the argument that the presumption “governs substantive conduct-regulating provisions rather than procedural provisions” Moreover RJR Nabisco also reemphasized that the relevant question is not whether we think Congress “would have wanted” the statute to apply extraterritorially had it foreseen the precise situation before us but whether it made clear its intention to give the statute extraterritorial effect RJR Nabisco 2016 WL 3369423 at 7 There is no indication whatsoever in the text or legislative history that Congress intended the Act to have application beyond our borders It would be quite surprising if it had The statute was adopted in the early days of what is now the internet when Congress could hardly have foreseen that multinational companies providing digital services of all sorts would one day store vast volumes of communications and other materials for ordinary people and easily be able to move those materials across borders at lightning speed See Majority Op at 14 The tricky part in a world of transnational transactions taking place in multiple jurisdictions at once is deciding whether a proposed application of a statute is domestic or extraterritorial That determination can be complicated even for criminal acts when they touch on multiple jurisdictions but the problem is particularly acute when we deal not with a simple 8 effort to regulate behavior that – given the physical limitations of human bodies – can often be fixed to a specific location but with statutes that operate in more complex fashions If SCA warrants were traditional search warrants permitting law enforcement agents to search a premises and seize physical objects the extraterritoriality question would be relatively easy a warrant authorizing a search of a building physically located in Ireland would plainly be an extraterritorial application of the statute and it would be virtually inconceivable under ordinary notions of international law that Congress would ever attempt to authorize any such thing But as the government points out this case differs from that classic scenario with respect to both the nature of the legal instrument involved and the nature of the evidentiary material the government seeks First the “warrant” required for the government to obtain the emails sought in this case does not appear to be a traditional search warrant Significantly the SCA does not describe the warrant as a search warrant Nor does it contain language implying let alone saying outright that the warrant to which it refers authorizes government agents to go to the premises of a service provider without prior notice to the provider search those premises until they find the computer server or other device on which the sought communications reside and seize that device or duplicate and “seize” the relevant data it contains 3 Rather the statute expressly 3 I do note however that the particular warrant in this case states that the government “requests the search of” a “PREMISES” and “COMMAND S ” an officer to “execute” the warrant on or before a certain date and time J A 44 Neither party argues that this case turns on the language in the warrant itself and the government explains that this language was included only because the warrant “was prepared using the generic template for search warrants ” Gov’t Br 20 Nevertheless it is worth emphasizing that the government itself chose the “template” it used to create the warrant it then asked the magistrate judge to sign It is to say the least unimaginative for the government to utilize a warrant form that purports to authorize conduct that the statute under which it is obtained plainly does not permit and then to turn around and 9 requires the “warrant” not to authorize a search or seizure but as the procedural mechanism to allow the government to “require a service provider to disclose the contents of certain electronic communication s ” without notice to the subscriber or customer 18 U S C § 2703 b 1 A Parallel provisions permit the government to require equivalent disclosure of the communications by the service provider by a simple administrative subpoena or by a court order provided only that notice is provided to the subscriber Id § 2703 b 1 B 4 Indeed the various methods of obtaining the communications with or without notice are not merely parallel – they all depend on the same verbal phrase They are simply alternative means applicable in different circumstances to “require the service provider to disclose the communications ” Id § 2703 a b argue that this sort of warrant is completely different from what its language tells us it is and that the language is unimportant because the government simply used the same formal template it uses under other more traditional circumstances involving physical searches 4 One category of communications – those held “in electronic storage” by an electronic communication service for one hundred and eighty days or less – is reachable only by SCA warrant with or without notice to the customer 18 U S C § 2703 a But although we ourselves have not addressed the issue the majority view is that once the user of an entirely web-based email service such as Microsoft’s opens an email he has received that email is no longer “in electronic storage” on an electronic communication service See Lazette v Kulmatycki 949 F Supp 2d 748 758 N D Ohio 2013 Crispin v Christian Audigier Inc 717 F Supp 2d 965 987 C D Cal 2010 United States v Weaver 636 F Supp 2d 769 773 C D Ill 2009 Jennings v Jennings 736 S E 2d 242 245 S C 2012 id at 248 Toal C J concurring in the result Kerr A User’s Guide supra at 1216–18 n 61 cf Anzaldua v Ne Ambulance Fire Prot Dist 793 F 3d 822 840–42 8th Cir 2015 message retained on Gmail server in “sent” folder was not in electronic storage But see Cheng v Romo Civ No 1110007-DJC 2013 WL 6814691 at 3–5 D Mass Dec 20 2013 Pure Power Boot Camp v Warrior Fitness Boot Camp 587 F Supp 2d 548 555 S D N Y 2008 cf Theofel v FareyJones 359 F 3d 1066 1075–77 9th Cir 2003 message is in electronic storage until it “has expired in the normal course” Under that reading of the statute only emails that have not yet been opened by the recipient fall into the category described above 10 This difference is significant if we are looking to determine the “focus” of the SCA for purposes of determining whether a particular application of the statute is or is not extraterritorial See Morrison v Nat’l Australia Bank Ltd 561 U S 247 266–69 2010 A search warrant “particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized ” U S Const amend IV is naturally seen as focused on the place to be searched as explained above if the government argued that a statute authorized a search of a place outside the United States that would clearly be an extraterritorial application of the statute Here however the SCA warrant provision does not purport to authorize any such thing Just like the parallel subpoena and court order provisions it simply authorizes the government to require the service provider to disclose certain communications to which it has access 5 The government quite reasonably argues that 5 Although the Supreme Court has not addressed the question there is considerable case law including in this circuit permitting the exercise of subpoena powers in precisely the situation in which the government demands records located abroad from an American company or a foreign company doing business here See e g Linde v Arab Bank PLC 706 F 3d 92 2d Cir 2013 United States v Bank of Nova Scotia 740 F 2d 817 11th Cir 1984 Marc Rich Co A G v United States 707 F 2d 663 2d Cir 1983 United States v First Nat’l City Bank 396 F 2d 897 900–01 2d Cir 1968 “It is no longer open to doubt that a federal court has the power to require the production of documents located in foreign countries if the court has in personam jurisdiction of the person in possession or control of the material ” At least as far as American courts are concerned some foreign governments may think otherwise such demands for the production of records are not seen as categorically impermissible extraterritorial uses of American investigatory powers in the way that search warrants for foreign locations certainly would be Compare Restatement Third of Foreign Relations Law § 442 1 a “A court or agency in the United States when authorized by statute or rule of court may order a person subject to its jurisdiction to produce documents objects or other information relevant to an action or investigation even if the information or the person in possession of the information is outside the United States ” with id § 433 1 “Law enforcement officers of the United States may exercise their functions in the territory of another state only a with the consent of the other state and if duly authorized by the United States and b in compliance with the laws both of the United States and of the other state ” Microsoft attempts to distinguish the cases cited above on the ground that the subpoenas in those cases required their recipients to disclose only the contents of their own business records and not the records of a third party “held in trust” by the recipients Appellant’s Br 48 11 the focus of such a provision is not on the place where the service provider stores the communications but on the place where the service provider discloses the information to the government as requested 6 The nature of the records demanded is also relevantly different from that of the physical documents sought by traditional search warrants Tangible documents having a material existence in the physical world are stored in a particular physical location Executing a traditional search warrant requires a visit to that location to visually inspect the documents to select the responsive materials and to take those materials away Even when tangible documents are sought by subpoena rather than by search warrant it is arguable that the focus of the “Email correspondance ” Microsoft explains is unlike bank records because it “is personal even intimate ” and “can contain the sum of an individual’s private life ” Id at 44 internal quotation marks omitted Even assuming however that Microsoft accurately characterizes the cases it seeks to distinguish but cf In re Horowitz 482 F 2d 72 2d Cir 1973 partially upholding a subpoena requiring an accountant to produce the contents of three locked file cabinets belonging to a client this privacy-based argument is as explained above a red herring Microsoft does not dispute that the government could have required the disclosure of the emails at issue here if they were stored in the United States and Microsoft’s decision to store them abroad does not obviously entitle their owner to any higher degree of privacy protection 6 As the government notes the selection of the term “warrant” to describe an instrument that does not operate like a traditional arrest or search warrant is easily explained by the fact that the provision in question which permits government access to a person’s stored communications without notice to that person provides the highest level of privacy protection in the statute the requirement that an independent judicial officer determine that probable cause exists to believe that a crime has been committed and that evidence of that crime may be found in the communications demanded The showing necessary to obtain judicial authorization to require the service provider to disclose the communications is that associated with traditional warrants the manner in which the disclosure is obtained by the government however is more closely analogous to the workings of subpoenas and court-ordered discovery the government serves the service provider with an order from a court that requires the service provider to look within its records and disclose the specified information to the government it does not present to the service provider a court order that permits government agents to search through the service provider’s premises and documents and seize the specified information 12 subpoena for extraterritoriality purposes is on the place where the documents are stored since in order to comply with a subpoena seeking documents stored abroad corporate employees will have to be present in the foreign location where the documents exist to inspect and select the relevant documents which will then have to be transported out of that location and into the United States Electronic “documents ” however are different Their location on a computer server in a foreign country is in important ways merely virtual See Orin S Kerr The Next Generation Communications Privacy Act 162 U Pa L Rev 373 408 2014 explaining that “the very idea of online data being located in a particular physical ‘place’ is becoming rapidly outdated ” because computer files can be fragmented and dispersed across many servers Corporate employees in the United States can review those records when responding to the “warrant” or subpoena or court order just as they can do in the ordinary course of business and provide the relevant materials to the demanding government agency without ever leaving their desks in the United States The entire process of compliance takes place domestically The government’s characterization of the warrant at issue as domestic rather than extraterritorial is thus far from frivolous and renders this for me a very close case to the extent that the presumption against extraterritoriality shapes our interpretation of the statute One additional potential fact heightens the complexity We do not know on this record whether the customer whose emails were sought by the government is or is not a United States citizen or resident It is not clear that whether the customer is a United States person or not matters to the rather simplistic “focus” test adopted by the Supreme Court in Morrison although it would have mattered to the more flexible test utilized by the Second Circuit in that case See Morrison v 13 Nat’l Australia Bank Ltd 547 F 3d 167 171 2d Cir 2008 But it seems to me that it should matter The Supreme Court has rightly pointed out that the presumption against extraterritoriality is more than simply a means for avoiding conflict with foreign laws See Morrison 561 U S at 255 At the same time the presumption that Congress legislates with domestic concerns pre-eminent in its collective mind does not fully answer the question what those domestic concerns are in any given case See id at 266 Particularly in connection with statutes that provide tools to law enforcement one imagines that Congress is concerned with balancing liberty interests of various kinds against the need to enforce domestic law Thus when Congress authorizes the American government to obtain access to certain information one might imagine that its focus is on balancing the liberty interests of Americans and of other persons residing in the U S against the need to enforce American laws Congress might also reasonably be concerned about the diplomatic consequences of over-extending the reach of American law enforcement officials This suggests a more complex balancing exercise than identifying a single “focus” of the legislation the latter approach being better suited to determining whether given conduct fitting within the literal words of a prohibition should be characterized as domestic or extraterritorial 7 7 While for these reasons it may be impossible to answer satisfactorily the question what the single focus of the SCA is I note that I have considerable doubts about the answer supplied by the Court which holds that the SCA provisions at issue here “focus on protecting the privacy of the content of a user’s stored electronic communications ” Majority Op at 33 Privacy however is an abstract concept with no obvious territorial locus the conclusion that the SCA’s focus is privacy thus does not really help us to distinguish domestic applications of the statute from extraterritorial ones “The real motor of the Court’s opinion ” Morrison 561 U S at 284 Stevens J concurring in the judgment then is less the conclusion that the statute focuses on privacy than the majority’s further determination that the locus of the invasion of privacy is where the private content is stored – a determination that seems to me suspect when the content consists of emails stored in the “cloud ” It seems at least equally persuasive that the invasion of privacy occurs where the person whose privacy is invaded customarily resides 14 Because Microsoft relies solely on customers’ self-reporting in classifying customers by residence and stores emails but only for the most part and only in the interests of efficiency and good customer service on local servers – and because the government did not include in its warrant application such information if any as it had about the target of its investigation – we do not know the nationality of the customer If he or she is Irish as for all we know the customer is the case might present a troubling prospect from an international perspective the Irish government and the European Union would have a considerable grievance if the United States sought to obtain the emails of an Irish national stored in Ireland from an American company which had marketed its services to Irish customers in Ireland The case looks rather different however – at least to me and I would hope to the people and officials of Ireland and the E U – if the American government is demanding from an American company emails of an American citizen resident in the U S which are accessible at the push of a button in Redmond Washington and which are stored on a server in Ireland only as a result of the American customer’s misrepresenting his or her residence for the purpose of facilitating domestic violations of American law by exploiting a policy of the American company that exists solely for reasons of convenience and that could be changed either in general or as applied to the particular customer at the whim of the American company Given that the extraterritoriality inquiry is essentially an effort to capture the congressional will it seems to me that it would be remarkably formalistic to classify such a demand as an extraterritorial application of what is effectively the subpoena power of an American court These considerations give me considerable pause about treating SCA warrants as extraterritorial whenever the service provider from whom the government seeks to require 15 production has chosen to store the communications on a server located outside the United States Despite that hesitation however I conclude that my colleagues have ultimately reached the correct result If we frame the question as whether Congress has demonstrated a clear intention to reach situations of this kind in enacting the Act I think the better answer is that it has not especially in the case which could well be this one of records stored at the behest of a foreign national on servers in his own country The use of the word “warrant” may not compel the conclusion that Congress intended to reach only domestically-stored communications that could be reached by a conventional search warrant because for the reasons given above that label should not be controlling Cf Big Ridge Inc v Fed Mine Safety Health Review Comm’n 715 F 3d 631 645–46 7th Cir 2013 explaining that “we look to the substance of the government’s inspection power rather than how the Act nominally refers to those powers ” and holding that document requests under the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 should be treated as administrative subpoenas rather than as a search or seizure But it is hard to believe that Congress would have used such a loaded term and incorporated by reference the procedures applicable to purely domestic warrants if it had given any thought at all to potential transnational applications of the statute Nor is it likely that Congress contemplated such applications for a single moment The now-familiar idea of “cloud” storage of personal electronic data by multinational companies was hardly foreseeable to Congress in 1986 and the related prospects for diplomatic strife and implications for American businesses operating on an international scale were surely not on the congressional radar screen when the Act was adopted We should not lightly assume that Congress chose to permit SCA warrants for communications stored abroad when there is no sign that it considered the consequences of doing so See Kiobel 16 v Royal Dutch Petroleum Co 133 S Ct 1659 1664 2013 “The presumption against extraterritorial application helps ensure that the Judiciary does not erroneously adopt an interpretation of U S law that carries foreign policy consequences not clearly intended by the political branches ” Thus while I think the case is closer – and the government’s arguments more potent – than is reflected in the Court’s opinion I come out in the same place III Despite ultimately agreeing with the result in this case I dwell on the reasons for thinking it close because the policy concerns raised by the government are significant and require the attention of Congress I do not urge that Congress write the government’s interpretation into the Act That is a policy judgment on which my own views have no particular persuasive force My point is simply that the main reason that both the majority and I decide this case against the government is that there is no evidence that Congress has ever weighed the costs and benefits of authorizing court orders of the sort at issue in this case The SCA became law at a time when there was no reason to do so But there is reason now and it is up to Congress to decide whether the benefits of permitting subpoena-like orders of the kind issued here outweigh the costs of doing so Moreover while I do not pretend to the expertise necessary to advocate a particular answer to that question it does seem to me likely that a sensible answer will be more nuanced than the position advanced by either party to this case As indicated above I am skeptical of the conclusion that the mere location abroad of the server on which the service provider has chosen to store communications should be controlling putting those communications beyond the reach of a purely “domestic” statute That may be the default position to which a court must revert in 17 the absence of guidance from Congress but it is not likely to constitute the ideal balance of conflicting policy goals Nor is it likely that the ideal balance would allow the government free rein to demand communications wherever located from any service provider of whatever nationality relating to any customer whatever his or her citizenship or residence whenever it can establish probable cause to believe that those communications contain evidence of a violation of American criminal law of whatever degree of seriousness Courts interpreting statutes that manifestly do not address these issues cannot easily create nuanced rules the statute either applies extraterritorially or it does not the particular demand made by the government either should or should not be characterized as extraterritorial Our decision today is thus ultimately the application of a default rule of statutory interpretation to a statute that does not provide an explicit answer to the question before us It does not purport to decide what the answer should be let alone to impose constitutional limitations on the range of solutions Congress could consider Congress need not make an all-or-nothing choice It is free to decide for example to set different rules for access to communications stored abroad depending on the nationality of the subscriber or of the corporate service provider It could provide for access to such information only on a more demanding showing than probable cause or only as with wiretapping where other means of investigation are inadequate or only in connection with investigations into extremely serious crimes rather than in every law enforcement context Or it could adopt other more creative solutions that go beyond the possibilities evident to federal judges limited by their own experience and by the information provided by litigants in a particular case 18 In addition Congress need not limit itself to addressing the particular question raised by this case The SCA was adopted in 1986 at a time when the kinds of services provided by “remote computing services” were not remotely as extensive and complex as those provided today and when the economic and security concerns presented by such services were not remotely as important as they are now More than a dozen years ago a leading commentator was expressing the need to reform the Act See Kerr A User’s Guide supra at 1233–42 It would seem to make sense to revisit among other aspects of the statute whether various distinctions such as those between communications stored within the last 180 days and those that have been held longer between electronic communication services and remote computing services or between disclosures sought with or without notice to the customer should be given the degree of significance that the Act accords them in determining the level of privacy protection it provides or whether other factors should play some role in that determination 8 Congress has in the past proven adept at adopting rules for adapting the basic requirements of the Fourth Amendment to new technologies The wiretapping provisions of Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 18 U S C §§ 2510–22 for example proved to be a remarkably stable and effective structure for dealing with the privacy and law enforcement issues raised by electronic surveillance in the telephone era More recently 8 As the Court notes Majority Op at 28 n 23 the House of Representatives recently passed a bill amending the SCA’s required disclosure provisions Email Privacy Act H R 699 114th Cong § 3 2016 That bill would require the government to obtain a warrant before it can compel the disclosure of the contents of any electronic communication “stored held or maintained” by either an electronic communication service or under certain circumstances a remote computing service no matter the length of the period of storage Id It does not however address those provisions’ extraterritorial reach or significantly modernize the statute’s structure See Kerr The Next Generation supra at 386–89 criticizing a proposal similar to the Email Privacy Act for “work ing within the SCA’s outdated framework” As of this writing the Senate has not taken any action on the bill 19 Congress was able to address the concerns presented by the mass acquisition of metadata by the National Security Agency by creating a more nuanced statute than that which the NSA had claimed as authority for its actions See ACLU v Clapper 804 F 3d 617 620 2d Cir 2015 discussing the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 Pub L No 114-23 129 Stat 268 2015 I fully expect that the Justice Department will respond to this decision by seeking legislation to overrule it If it does so Congress would do well to take the occasion to address thoughtfully and dispassionately the suitability of many of the statute’s provisions to serving contemporary needs Although I believe that we have reached the correct result as a matter of interpreting the statute before us I believe even more strongly that the statute should be revised with a view to maintaining and strengthening the Act’s privacy protections rationalizing and modernizing the provisions permitting law enforcement access to stored electronic communications and other data where compelling interests warrant it and clarifying the international reach of those provisions after carefully balancing the needs of law enforcement particularly in investigations addressing the most serious kinds of transnational crime against the interests of other sovereign nations For these reasons I concur in the result but without any illusion that the result should even be regarded as a rational policy outcome let alone celebrated as a milestone in protecting privacy 20