We have a thread here on it.
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...-PHONE-CO%92s-RETRIEVE-CELL-amp-TEXT-MSG-INFO
I remember this being discussed during the Christina Morris case. At the time, Verizon and Virgin Mobile were the only major carriers that retained the content of the texts and Verizon only kept them 3-5 days. (Virgin Mobile kept them longer - 90 days - and the search warrant had to specifically state that LE wanted the text content. But now they have been bought out by Sprint.) The others - Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T and Nextel - did not keep them. This chart on the ACLU web page shows the retention:
https://www.aclu.org/cell-phone-loc...ponse-cell-phone-company-data-retention-chart
The data could be in a cloud, but as a CPA I've discussed this with fraud examiners and LE with knowledge in this area and the cloud presents an entirely different set of issues. If the data is in a cloud that is encrypted, the cell phone holder may be the only holder of the key. Neither the cloud provider or the carrier would be able to decipher it without that key. The location of the cloud server is another issue as some of them do not reside in the US and therefore do not recognize US search warrants. And since carriers have agreements with multiple cloud providers it is extremely difficult to determine which cloud provider has the data - if it even all resides on one cloud. Since the cloud providers in many cases are not divisions or part of the carrier's organization but companies where the carrier rents space on a server, the search warrant has to be served on the cloud provider.
https://leb.fbi.gov/2014/october/executing-search-warrants-in-the-cloud