(credit: Spies Like Us) Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against the US government over the number of secrecy orders it has received to allow g-men and cops access to customers' e-mails and other records. The software giant's chief legal officer Brad Smith said that gagging orders had been applied to 2,576 such demands over the course of an 18-month period. Microsoft's top counsel added that 1,752 (68 percent) of those secrecy orders had no end date—"This means we effectively are prohibited forever [Smith's emphasis] from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data," he said. Smith added in a blog post: Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments