<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/24/us_government_microsoft_email_seizur...> The US government has lost a legal appeal to have a critical case against Microsoft reheard, paving the way for a Supreme Court challenge. In an even split of 4-4 judges, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New York, denied [PDF] the request for a full rehearing of the case in which Microsoft has refused to hand over to American investigators the emails of a non-US citizen held on a server in Ireland. The case is seen as a critical test of how far legal jurisdiction in the internet era can stretch. Back in 2014, the FBI used a law dating from 1986 (the Stored Communications Act) to ask for the emails; Microsoft refused to hand them over, arguing that search warrants did not reach beyond US borders. In July 2016, the appeals court sided with Microsoft when it concluded that "the Stored Communications Act does not authorize courts to issue and enforce against US‐based service providers warrants for the seizure of customer email content that is stored exclusively on foreign servers." That decision came following an unusual legal approach that Microsoft adopted in 2014, where it actively asked a New York judge to find it in contempt of court for refusing to honor the warrant. []