In a rare show of unity between tech giants, Apple and Cisco have joined forces with Microsoft to try and fend off a warrant that would allow US law enforcement agencies to access data stored in offshore data centers.

The two companies have filed a joint amicus brief, joining the likes of AT&T, Verizon and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The case began in earnest last April, when Microsoft was ordered by a US District Court to hand over the keys to data requested by an anonymous federal agency, even though some of that data is stored in offshore servers (in Ireland, in this particular case).

Despite US officials apparently not having any jurisdiction over data centers location in foreign nations, the logic of the magistrate in this particular case was that it would be too time-consuming for law enforcement to seek permission to access US firm’s data on a country-by-country basis.

And it seems US tech firms aren’t at all pleased about this. Their reasoning is simple enough – if data stored in the cloud is unprotected from extra-territorial law enforcement requests, that’s going to put off a lot of non-US customers who trust their data with American companies.

So that’s why Apple and Cisco have weighed in on the matter with their amicus brief, which can be read here.

The companies use the same argument as Microsoft; that is, that the magistrate “erred by failing to consider the conflicting obligations under foreign and domestic law that arise when courts order providers to produce data about foreign users stored in foreign countries”.

The brief goes on to explain that issues of sovereignty aren’t to be resolved by private companies or courts, but by governments. They also argue what the magistrate has ordered them to do violates data protection laws in other countries, something that “places providers and their employees at significant risk of foreign sanctions, and threatens a potential loss of customer confidence in US providers generally.”

In addition, they point out that other nations might be tempted to try the same thing and demand access to data stored on US-based servers, a nightmare scenario that would effectively kill all trust in cloud computing providers the world over.

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