微軟本週早些時候透露，該公司掃描了一名部落格作者的Hotmail帳戶，以追蹤一名Windows 8洩密者。一名前微軟員工，據稱洩露了Windows8和反盜版軟體的機密副本，隨後被逮捕並起訴，因為微軟透過搜尋一名法國部落格作者的Hotmail帳戶確認了此人的身份。微軟在公司的服務條款中使用了一條Outlook.com 允許它掃描帳戶。此舉引發了人們對這一做法的廣泛爭論，微軟告訴《邊緣報》，它正計劃針對未來的案例修改政策。

雖然**不會釋出命令授權一家公司搜尋自己的資料，但微軟副總裁兼副總法律顧問約翰•弗蘭克（John Frank）承認，“即使我們不應該搜尋自己的電子郵件和其他****，除非情況允許**發出命令（如果有的話）。”，微軟的政策正在改變，這樣一個獨立於內部調查小組的法律小組將對任何案件進行評估，以確定他們是否有理由作出法庭命令。微軟表示，它還將把證據提交給外部律師，只有在前法官認為必要時才進行搜查。

微軟承諾未來將釋出透明報告

微軟還計劃釋出一份每兩年一次的透明度報告，詳細說明搜尋次數和受影響的客戶賬戶數量。”這些步驟的唯一例外是對微軟員工的內部調查，我們在公司調查過程中發現，這些員工正在使用他們的個人賬戶從事微軟業務在這些情況下，審查將僅限於調查的主題。”微軟的完整宣告如下：

We believe that Outlook and Hotmail email are and should be private.  Today there has been coverage about a particular case.  While we took extraordinary acti*** in this case based on the specific circumstances and our concerns about product integrity that would impact our customers, we want to provide additional context regarding how we approach these issues generally and how we are evolving our policies.

Courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed.  So even when we believe we have probable cause, it’s not feasible to ask a court to order us to search ourselves. However, even we should not conduct a search of our own email and other customer services unless the circumstances would justify a court order, if one were available.  In order to build on our current practices and provide assurances for the future, we will follow the following policies going forward:

• To ensure we comply with the standards applicable to obtaining a court order, we will rely in the first instance on a legal team separate from the internal investigating team to assess the evidence. We will move forward only if that team concludes there is evidence of a crime that would be sufficient to justify a court order, if one were applicable. As an additional step, as we go forward, we will then submit this evidence to an outside attorney who is a former federal judge.  We will conduct such a search only if this former judge similarly concludes that there is evidence sufficient for a court order.
• Even when such a search takes place, it is important that it be confined to the matter under investigation and not search for other information.  We therefore will continue to ensure that the search itself is conducted in a proper manner, with supervision by counsel for this purpose.
• Finally, we believe it is appropriate to ensure transparency of these types of searches, just as it is for searches that are conducted in resp***e to governmental or court orders.  We therefore will publish as part of our bi-annual transparency report the data on the number of these searches that have been conducted and the number of customer accounts that have been affected.

The only exception to these steps will be for internal investigati*** of Microsoft employees who we find in the course of a company investigation are using their personal accounts for Microsoft business.   And in these cases, the review will be confined to the subject matter of the investigation.

The privacy of our customers is incredibly important to us, and while we believe our acti*** in this particular case were appropriate given the specific circumstances, we want to be clear about how we will handle similar situati*** going forward. That is why we are building on our current practices and adding to them to further strengthen our processes and increase transparency.

John Frank, Vice President & Deputy General Counsel