Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, will tell members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day.
Burt is among the witnesses at a Judiciary Committee hearing about potential legislative solutions to intrusive leak investigations. “What may be most shocking,” he added, “is just how routine court-mandated secrecy has become when law enforcement targets Americans’ emails, text messages, and other sensitive data stored in the cloud.”