"Disagreement rate" would be as meaningless a number as conviction rates are. A low disagreement rate could indicate the "plaintiff" is careful to make only reasonable requests, or it could indicate the "defense" is not doing its job. A high disagreement rate could indicate the lots of unreasonable requests, or it could indicate reasonable requests are being unreasonably denied.

You can't even reach a conclusion as to what would constitute a high, low, or expected rate.

You'd only get real data if you have the team go back and review the previous cases to see if the approval rate would change.

Why hasn't Microsoft volunteered to disclosure past data? Hiding something? The comparison to the near framework is warranted to highlight the bite of the proposed new framework.

It's really not that different from other internal audit teams. Financial audit doesn't exist to make the accountants happy, and IT audit teams won't hesitate to rip into the IT groups. This is basically a comprehensive, proactive legal audit of any internal user data request. As long as they don't fall under the same management as the other legal team, there shouldn't be much internal pressure to compromise.

It's a simple feature called redundancy. In the rare event that one team fails to approve a search, the second is still likely to!

No it's the exact opposite, both teams have to approve, not one or the other. Read the article rather than assuming you know what the headline means.

They are worried that the negative PR of them reading users mail when it suits them will result in stricter legislation about these matters. So to head that off, they've invented this legal circus show to legitimise the whole thing.