Protecting corporate intellectual property: Legal and technical approaches

The recent FBI v. Apple case has the potential to turn a 227-year-old statute law into a tool for government agencies to gain access to personal and corporate information. Recent events such as 'Petraeus-gate,' hacked nude celebrity photos in the cloud, and the use of a search and seizure warrant in the United States seeking customer email contents on an extraterritorial server raise important issues for the supposedly safe storage of data on the World Wide Web. Not only may there be nowhere to hide in cyberspace but nothing in cyberspace may be private. This article explores the legal and technical issues raised by these matters, with emphasis on the court decision In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E-Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation and the subsequent upholding of that decision.