微软本周早些时候透露，该公司扫描了一名博客作者的Hotmail帐户，以追踪一名Windows 8泄密者。一名前微软员工，据称泄露了Windows8和反盗版软件的机密副本，随后被逮捕并起诉，因为微软通过搜索一名法国博客作者的Hotmail帐户确认了此人的身份。微软在公司的服务条款中使用了一条Outlook.com 允许它扫描帐户。此举引发了人们对这一做法的广泛争论，微软告诉《边缘报》，它正计划针对未来的案例修改政策。

虽然**不会发布命令授权一家公司搜索自己的数据，但微软副总裁兼副总法律顾问约翰•弗兰克（John Frank）承认，“即使我们不应该搜索自己的电子邮件和其他****，除非情况允许**发出命令（如果有的话）。”，微软的政策正在改变，这样一个独立于内部调查小组的法律小组将对任何案件进行评估，以确定他们是否有理由作出法庭命令。微软表示，它还将把证据提交给外部律师，只有在前法官认为必要时才进行搜查。

微软承诺未来将发布透明报告

微软还计划发布一份每两年一次的透明度报告，详细说明搜索次数和受影响的客户账户数量。”这些步骤的唯一例外是对微软员工的内部调查，我们在公司调查过程中发现，这些员工正在使用他们的个人账户从事微软业务在这些情况下，审查将仅限于调查的主题。”微软的完整声明如下：

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