US subpoena on a UK company
Discussion
My business partner in the US just asked this question that I have no idea to what the answer is. Any help would be appreciated:
XXX Hosting Company is a UK company... its servers are in the UK.... what are its obligations to submit materials (logs and such) of account activity (access, file upload, edit, delete, etc) within a hosting account under subpoena from (private, non-governmental related) US attorneys?
Let's further say that the issue has nothing to do with illegal activity, i.e. copyright, warez, spam, phishing, etc, and that the logs would only show activity of the account holder, no third parties, and all the account holder did was upload, delete, or modify files of their own creation anyway... blah blah blah.
XXX Hosting Company is a UK company... its servers are in the UK.... what are its obligations to submit materials (logs and such) of account activity (access, file upload, edit, delete, etc) within a hosting account under subpoena from (private, non-governmental related) US attorneys?
Let's further say that the issue has nothing to do with illegal activity, i.e. copyright, warez, spam, phishing, etc, and that the logs would only show activity of the account holder, no third parties, and all the account holder did was upload, delete, or modify files of their own creation anyway... blah blah blah.
That doesn't stop them extraditing the directors of British companies who they claim have broken US law.
There is a case in the papers at the moment, the new extradition treaty was supposed to be for terrorism suspects not for white collar crime, for an offence that might not even be a criminal one here. What makes it worse is that Congress have not ratified the treaty, so they won't extradite their citizens here.
There is a case in the papers at the moment, the new extradition treaty was supposed to be for terrorism suspects not for white collar crime, for an offence that might not even be a criminal one here. What makes it worse is that Congress have not ratified the treaty, so they won't extradite their citizens here.
The British firm has no obligation to the USA.
The key issue though is to limit time wasting and cheque writing, so the issue should be dealt with at home.
I suggest the appropriate way to deal with it is to say that the UK firm is obligated to work within English Law,
and for the US firm to retain British Lawyers and have them request information, through English courts if necessary.
I'd see it this way, if an English court can make some sort of judgement on the merits of any part of the case, it will probably define jurisdiction and scope, and limit what can happen if the very worst happens.
And in the best case the US client will completely give up as the lawyers fees start to look stupidly expensive.
The key issue though is to limit time wasting and cheque writing, so the issue should be dealt with at home.
I suggest the appropriate way to deal with it is to say that the UK firm is obligated to work within English Law,
and for the US firm to retain British Lawyers and have them request information, through English courts if necessary.
I'd see it this way, if an English court can make some sort of judgement on the merits of any part of the case, it will probably define jurisdiction and scope, and limit what can happen if the very worst happens.
And in the best case the US client will completely give up as the lawyers fees start to look stupidly expensive.
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