Currently, US authorities are repeatedly requesting the release of customer data. Recently, the Messenger Signal, which as we know runs in Microsoft Azure data centers and is designed with Azure confidential computing, has been hit again and again.
The request
On October 05, 2020, Signal received a repeated request for surrender. This time via a regular court procedure based on US criminal law, as it would also be possible in Germany based on the German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO) to demand a seizure and surrender. This time it was the public prosecutor’s office from California on behalf of the FBI.
After more than a year Signal was allowed to talk about this request. In Germany, for comparison, things are different. Here, § 15a V S. 2 TMG applies (“The obligated parties must maintain silence about the request for information and the provision of information vis-à-vis the affected parties as well as third parties.”) and this prohibits the affected party or third party than us to inform about it.
Signal has published the request at:
https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/
Extract
The result
No surrender
Signal answered the question with their lawyers and denied the surrender solely due to technical possibilities:
