Government Has a Right to Read Your Email? 382
gone.fishing writes to tell us that a new lawsuit is challenging the government's right to read your e-mail. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting that a seller of "natural male enhancement" products sued after a fraud indictment based on evidence gleaned from his electronic mail. Federal prosecutors say they don't need a search warrant to read your e-mail messages if those messages happen to be stored in someone else's computer."
What part of (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it or not, the Internet was built by the Federal Government- and it very much is the public domain. Any message sent across it unencrypted is just as much fair game for prosecutuion as taking a picture of you mooning other cars on the freeway.
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Re:What part of (Score:5, Funny)
You mean they can get me for that??
Only if they run the image through their new ass-recognition software.
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Re:What part of (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it or not, the Internet was built by the Federal Government- and it very much is the public domain. Any message sent across it unencrypted is just as much fair game for prosecutuion as taking a picture of you mooning other cars on the freeway.
That's not the argument they're making. They're arguing that since you don't own the computer the message is stored on, you have no right to privacy.
That makes no sense, however. I don't own the phone network once it leaves my house (more precisely, the NID), but I have a right to privacy as defined by quite a bit of legislation.
Like it or not, the Internet was built by the Federal Government- and it very much is the public domain
Don't know where to start with this one. First, when we talk about "public domain," we're talking copyrightable works. The internet isn't copyrightable. Second, the government doesn't own the individual links in the internet backbone.
In short, I'm having a hard time seeing why an unsecured communication between two people should be protected when it's a phone conversation taking place over, say, Verizon-owned fiber, but not if it's an email saved on a Verizon-owned hard drive.
Re:What part of (Score:5, Insightful)
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JACEM
Re:What part of (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What part of (Score:5, Informative)
That makes no sense, however. I don't own the phone network once it leaves my house (more precisely, the NID), but I have a right to privacy as defined by quite a bit of legislation.
That right there is the key. There is quite a bit of legislation protecting phone conversations. There isn't similar legislation in the case of emails.
In addition to that, the police do not need a warrant if they have permission from the owner. For example, if you get pulled over by the police, they don't need a warrant to search your car if they ask you for permission and you say "yes". Similarly, if they ask Verizon for the emails in a user's account, and Verizon gives it to them, it is perfectly legal without a warrant. The theory is that if the owner does not object to the search/seizure, then it must not be unreasonable.
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They could still legally give your emails to the police, but then they would be in breach of contract. At that point, you would have to file a civil case against them.
And I would argue (Score:3, Insightful)
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If it was really easy to use end-to-end encryption, that might be a reasonable expectation. But it's not really easy. The proof is that almost nobody encrypts their emails today, but if you told them that strangers were reading their emails, they'd be unhappy about it.
Compare the email situation with many other security precedents. There are phone-tap detecting devices out there that could be used to prevent eavesdroppi
Re:And I would argue (Score:4, Insightful)
Encryption is all well and good, and if you look on pgpkeys.mit.edu you will find my key. I drank the kool-aid a long time ago, but I certainly don't consider encrypted email to be a solved problem. Keyservers, as they are today, are basically a hack. There's no guarantee that you have the correct key. Sure, we could start reading fingerprints and hashes to each other over the phone, but that's far from ideal, and still doesn't solve the problem that if Alice doesn't already know Bob, calling who she believes to be Bob is really not doing all that much to verify any sort of real-world identity if she found Bob's phone number online (the same place she found Bob's key).
The fact that there's a "help" topic does not mean it's a solved problem.
similar legislation and ownership (Score:3, Informative)
Please read this reference [cornell.edu].
I don't quite get YOUR point... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you confess to a murder on the back of a postcard and email it to your brother, and your brother goes to the police with said postcard, or even if the mailman sees it and goes to the police before you brother even reads it, there is nothing stopping the police from charging you with murder. If the police find YOUR bloody gloves in your neighbours' yard the evidence is admiss
Re:Difference between phone & email (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because it requires every person you send email to or receive email from to be aware of the encryption system and how to use it, and most users of email are technically illiterate? I, for one, don't want to have to try to teach my parents how to use PGP so the government won't find out I'm planning to arrive for Christmas dinner at 2PM.
Re:Difference between phone & email (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the one you CANT pick as an option. People have ended up on government watchlists for incredibly dumb reasons, such as having the same last name as another person, or being photographed in the background at a public event. Unless you know of a way to change your name to one that no one else will ever commit a crime under, or how to never be near where anything of government interest will happen, there is no guarenteed way
Re:Difference between phone & email (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there some keyboard shortcut in Google Mail that I'm missing? People don't use encrypted mail because it's not readily available. Yes, the technology has been around for decades, but until it's pointy-clicky accessible via all of the major e-mail providers, it'll never go anywhere.
So is any encrypted message. (Score:2, Interesting)
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And what if you say you don't have the keys and you don't have any clue what the thing is about?
Seems that a really good way of getting someone you don't like incarcerated... send them some email (with a faked email return header, of course) that contains an encrypted message with no indication of how to decrypt it, but incriminating evidence within the email that its contents contain an illegal conspiracy.
Ultimately, if the person says they don't have the keys, the government would have to take them a
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Re:What part of (Score:5, Informative)
An analogy if you will. Suppose you and I commit a crime, the evidence of which is stashed at your house. The police come busting down your door without a warrant and find said evidence. In this case, your right to privacy has been violated and the evidence found cannot be used against you. However, this evidence can still be used against me. Why? Because I had no expectation of privacy IN YOUR HOUSE. As far as the law is concerned, the evidence found against me is as legitimate as if you had turned it in yourself.
Back to the email thing, the minute you send an email to an outside party, you voluntarily concede your expectation of privacy as YOU were the one who freely divulged whatever information was in that email.
Re:What part of (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAL, but something about this tells me that a decent lawyer could find something to get this evidence dismissed against both parties due to improper police handling of evidence.
The better analogy would be that you rent out storage space at the local long term storage places and store your evidence there.
The police come and ask the storage space owner to search your space. Your a customer of his, but chances are the storage owner doesn't care enough about you to demand a warrant so it is a moot point whether they have it or not and grants them permission.
However, the key question is here does that rented space count as requiring a warrant since it is indirectly leased to you.
For some reason (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this) but as far as I know search warrants are still required for apartments for the residents even if the landlord agrees and gives the police a key to get in.
This is one of the reasons Landlords must give 24 hour notice before they enter the apartment etc.
The key question here if your email space on the server is considered "lease property" and technically owned by the persons paying for the space.
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What moron modded you "insightful"? (Score:3, Insightful)
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And that would be completely correct if it wasn't for a set of special laws protecting the US Post Office- that same set of laws has NOT been passed for the Internet. If you want them- you need to write your congress critter.
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If the government is getting it off of one of these privately owned servers, then either the owner is giving it to them, or they had better have a search warrant for it.
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Re:What part of (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say NO- for the very reason put forth by the Feds. Once you send it out, that copy of the data belongs to the ISP, not you. No different than committing a crime in front of the local police station when you get right down to it.
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You seem to be making up legal precedent to suit your argument. The internet is not "the public domain." Ho
Re:What part of (Score:5, Insightful)
They own that copy- which you as the copyright owner freely gave them by ASKING THEIR E-MAIL SERVER TO MAKE A COPY!
Damn! Should the Fed have the right to open your snail mail, too?
They did with US Mail before they passed a bunch of laws making it illegal. They still have the right to open snail mail sent through FedEx, UPS, or a half dozen other private carriers.
What's the difference?
The difference is that the laws haven't been passed to make snooping on e-mail illegal. Or for that matter, UPS and FedEx packets.
Even when in public, I have a right to reasonable privacy.
Not by the Supreme Court, who ruled that you have NO reasonable expectation of privacy in the public sphere.
For instance, it's illegal to take pictures up someone's skirt. UP their skirt, you know, from ground level? If someone happens to be leaving a car and wearing no undies, that's different.
Yes, but that's a different special exception law- like the special exception of privacy in the US Mail. No such law has been passed for the Internet yet.
You seem to be making up legal precedent to suit your argument. The internet is not "the public domain." How is it different than phone lines?
The laws haven't been passed to make ISPs common carriers yet.
I mean, your phone conversation passes through many different telcos and any of them could easily listen to your conversations, but this is illegal.
Yes, but once again, special exception laws had to be passed to create that expectation of privacy in the public sphere.
How is the Internet different?
There aren't any laws creating privacy there yet.
Don't ISPs have common carrier status, and doesn't that preclude them from monitoring your communications?
No, ISPs do NOT have common carrier status- and they can do whatever the hell they want to as far as monitoring your communications are concerned.
And doesn't the government have to play by different rules anyway?
Yes, to a certain extent- but you can't smoke a joint in front of a policeman and expect not to get arrested either.
In the US, our government is bound by the Constitution which precludes them from doing certain things that a company could do.
True, but this isn't one of them, because the Internet wasn't created at the time the Constitution was. Neither were phones or the US Mail service- which is why special laws had to be passed by Congress to create privacy in that portion of the public sphere.
In short, your argument makes no sense It almost seems as if you are being contrary just to be contrary. I can say that black is no different than white, but that won't make it so any more than your claims about our legal and governmental systems make them true.
And claiming common carrier status for ISPs when no such law has been passed is just plain stupid.
Common Carrier (was: Re:What part of) (Score:3, Insightful)
Good one! That's a well reasoned, and well informed argument and answer.
So, it's an easy step from here to say "let's pass a law that recognizes ISP's as common carriers".
Write your congresscritter.
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Do you know what I see as being a BIG problem? The way the Constitution was originally created was that the federal government couldn't do anything unless it was expressly told so but now it effing thinks it can do anything it wants unless it's expressly told it can't.
That pisses
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Yep, I completely agree- but what are you going to do about it? They've got the nukes.
That pisses me OFF!!!
As well it should- but guess what- the prisons are full of people pissed off that the government took away their freedom. Write
Re:What part of (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have drugs in your car, and you loan your car to a friend, there's no law that says that they can't root around in your things, they have to be discreet about what they find, or that they can't drive up to a police station and let the cops have their way with your stuff. Your friend has lawful possession of your car, because you let them have it.
Your mail provider has lawful possession of your data, because you set up an e-mail account there. Your ISP also has lawful (though usually more brief) possession of your data, because that's the point of contracting for Internet service. You understood that by giving your data to them, they would send it over the Internet to its destination. Your ISP has business arrangements with other ISPs to make that happen. These ISPs must necessarily possess your data for a short period of time in order to perform the services you contracted with your ISP to perform. There is little (IF ANY) law that requires them to keep it confidential. (At least, that is the argument of the State.)
Even if you have some sort of contract with the friend (ISP) that says they do things to your car (data) that you don't want, there's no law that requires them to obey it. Worst case you take them to court for damages from their breach of contract. This will have no effect on the admissibility of the evidence.
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Sure it's different.
By your reasoning, any letter you send is property of the Post Office, therefore they have the right to read it without a warrant.
And any phone call you make is property of the phone company, therefore they have the right to listen in to it without a warrant.
While both of these have certainly been done (a
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Right to read (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Right to read (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Right to read (Score:4, Interesting)
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True.
My guess is that Fedex etal will say you can't haveinformation on our clients without a warrant/subpoena.
More likely, like most businesses, they'll take the easy way out unless forced to by contract law. I haven't examined the shipper contract on a fedex package recently- does it now include such a guarantee?
Otherwise why not just station a lay enforcement officer at all FEdex depot to search everything for potential criminal activity. On a kind of relat
What if... (Score:2, Insightful)
What if the mail in question is a post card?
It seems to me, that anyone who wants to keep their mail private, should put it in an appropriate container (aka encryption).
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In Soviet Russia... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of makes you wonder who really won the Cold War, doesn't it?
We've obviously been doing better than Russia and most or all of the other former Soviet republics, and capitalism clearly triumphed over communism, but when it comes to personal freedoms, we're doing to ourselves what we feared the Soviets would do to us. Did we really come out on top?
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Considering this law is the Stored Communications Act of 1986, and the Cold War wasn't even over yet then, yes, one does wonder.
...
Seriously, I know most people reading this will think this is some "new" law. No, what's "new"
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Maybe you haven't been paying attention to what goes on in Russia lately, but you should look into the stories of Alexander Litvinenko [wikipedia.org], Anna Politkovskaya [wikipedia.org], Paul Klebnikov [wikipedia.org], Artyom Borovik [wikipedia.org] and a few others.
You don't see t
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You might be overreacting just a touch. Godwin's Law should cover mentioning the Soviets, too.
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It's all part of the War on Terror, you know.
Why do the terrorists attack us? It's because they Hate Our Freedom.
Get rid of that, and we'll be rid of terrorism.
Re:In Soviet Russia... OT (Score:3, Interesting)
1. While enrolled in education, everything I do or say on a campus is subject to "restricted" rights
2. An animal can determine whether or not there's a 4th amendment allowance to search me
3. I can be told to take medication or be placed on the dole (if 'diagnosed' with a 'mental condition')
4. My phones are probably tapped at some point in a domestic communication, and are definitely tapped
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I believe the answer is... Yes! I thought that this is something that was known and accepted for the last bajillion years? I remeber working at a BBS in the 90's. The police called and said that they were investigating one of our susbscribers and wanted his e-mail. I asked the boss, and he said "sure". No court order, no warrnt, w
but that's not how email works. (Score:2)
Think of it like you sending a letter to a friend, asking them to transcribe it for you and then pass it onto another person - and then suing your friend for reading the message as they transcribed it.
When an email leaves your own network, you're relying on civic minded people to pass it along for you. Back to the snail mail analogy, if your package is lost in the post you can clai
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Might as well be me... (Score:2)
Liability (Score:3, Insightful)
Hearsay Evidence? (Score:3, Informative)
According to the Federal Search and Seizure Manual written by the Department of Justice:
Even if found by coincidence the "natural male enhancement" e-mails would not be admissible in a court of law, they would be considered hearsay.
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The government's argument is that no warrant is necessary since your documents are stored in the open. The ISPs hand over the data willingly.
Thus, all that is necessary is to maintain the chain of evidence such that it is clear who wrote it, who recieved it, and who touched it between sending and its appearance in court.
-GiH
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Yeah, but...
Read the article carefully. The ISP has the right to read the email, and pass it along to law enforcement.
USC 18, 2511(2)(a)(i):
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E-mail as court evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
From the U.K., but short and to the point:
Email content is treated in the same way as verbal and written expressions and statements and is admissible in a court of law. It is a common misconception that email messages carry less weight than letters on headed notepaper.
The problems are only likely to arise if your opponent disputes the authenticity of what
Specific instance of a general problem (Score:5, Insightful)
With old-style non-electronic messages, there is no distinction between the contents of the letter and the physical letter itself. Hundreds of years of laws and general ethical principles were written based on the assumption this will always be true. Now it's not, and it's all breaking down, but most people don't even notice this is the root of the problem because the assumption is so deeply ingrained. Instead, they want to just hack around the problem, not noticing you really need to rethink the whole system.
Copyright has the exact same problem [jerf.org].
The internet privacy advocates mentioned in the article, which the general
The reality is that we need to sit down and really re-think the entire situation. The old model is broken.
Catch 22... (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point here. If you're allowing a company to snoop your email for spam/viruses then you're already negating the privacy issue. If the judges decide that privacy wins out then the spam companies can sue to say that the big ISP's have no right to snoop their mail for spam before reaching your computer.
On the one side you've got the phone-call analogy (where the government can't eavesdrop on your phone calls even though they go through a public system) and on the other you've got the photo developing places which can turn over photos to the government if they deem something they see is illegal.
Definitely an interesting case.
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I pay an agency to come and clean my house, the women they send has keys, she comes and goes while I'm at work.
That's an arrangement I made with her. Is that supposed to mean that federal agents may now come and search my house any time they want without a warrant?
I gave up my privacy to google so they can perform specific tasks for me. (specifically, cleaning my email) I don't see the logical reasoning that leads from that to granting the FBI access to my email.
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Good point here. If you're allowing a company to snoop your email for spam/viruses then you're already negating the privacy issue.
The Post Office checks for dangerous characteristics of packages (smell, leading, powdery residue, someone pounding on inside demanding that you let him out) without opening them. The ISP checks for dangerous characteristics without any human actually reading the content.
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Never have mod points when I need them. (Score:2)
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When I give company A permission to examine my email and categorize it for me, that in no way gives company A permission to show the email to anyone that does not work for company A.
Your argument would be similar to someone claiming "The fact that you paid the dry cleaner to clean your clothing grants the government the right to take your clothing and run tests to see if it had any blood stains on the clothing."
Such an argument is not what a court would call reasonable.
One word.. (Score:2, Informative)
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You send male enhancement emails?
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Also, as a complete aside
Let me get
Interesting thing (Score:4, Interesting)
So, if I understand this right: The executive branch believes it has a right to read our email, because we have no "Constitutional" expectation of privacy, but the White House can refuse to turn over emails to Congress, because, alas, email is private?
So, I guess the Constitution gets interpreted differently when the subject of an investigation is the President. Hmmm....
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IANAL but my take on this is that if there is a search warrant on your PC for child pr0n that I would not have to be served a warrant as well if I sent you the files in question and that these same files that are being used against you as evidence would also be evidence that could be used against me as the sender.
Furthermore I'm reading it as if I had child pr0n in my GMai
If your email is on my server (Score:2)
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We're talking about what you "should" do not what you "can" do.
Sadly under this administration many US agencies have been displaying an eager "can-do" attitude.
Re:Interesting thing (Score:4, Interesting)
The crux of the matter is that the owner of the machine on which the email resides is the focus of any attempt to read said email. So if your ISP has your email on their server, the feds can ask them if they'll hand over the email, without ever having to ask you. The ISP can either say, "Sure, here it is!" again without having to ask you, or they can say "No, we keep our customer's email private." At that point, the feds can get a warrant to search the ISP's computers, again without having to ask you.
In the case of the White House, I imagine they have their own, highly secure email servers, on which the President's email is stored. It is not stored by another outside ISP. Therefore the only way for Congress to get the President's email is to ask the White House, or subpeona it.
Not that that would matter, anyway. See Executive Privilege [wikipedia.org].
Sorry, I know a "Bush is evil" post is an easy +5 on
Privacy and email (Score:2)
When the email hits a third party server, it is just data to them, and they can do what they want with it, subject to whatever agreement you have. So unless you signed a deal with them (IE your ISP) there is nothing special about it.
As long as the authorities got proper warrants to serve the third party for their data, they get it.
In Other News (Score:4, Funny)
"Government Has a Right to Read Your Email?" (Score:2, Insightful)
During the investigation, agents obtained court orders allowing them to collect thousands
Let me see if I've got this right (Score:3, Insightful)
You send your trash to me, I'll let the feds take it as evidence, gladly. You send several million of your trash to Yahoo, Google, and Hotmail, and they probably feel the same.
Free clue to spammers: The feds aren't the ones invading our privacy here. You are.
I don't believe the emails in question were spam (Score:3, Informative)
Encryption (Score:3, Informative)
The gov't can read my e-mail all they want. At least, they can try to. http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]
Does the question of "right" matter? (Score:2)
The question of whether or not they have the right to do that, may be somewhat interesting in some theoretical way. Go ahead and debate it, law students. But ultimately, it is irrelevant.
They have the capability. And it's not just the government -- lots of people have the capability. Your email can be easily intercepted and there's little you can do to prevent that, and furthermore, you're not going to know when it happens. Make it illegal, and it will still happen.
So, given the reality that is impos
Hardly New (Score:3, Informative)
As a matter of black letter law, the 4th Amendment does not protect "what a person knowingly reveals to the public." (Katz) Previous cases have held that your garbage, your bank records, and even phone records may be obtained without a warrant, provided that they are obtained from the third parties with which you are dealing and not your home.
There is federal statutory law on email (though I don't recall the precise citation) that treats email as a hybrid between telephone conversations and documents. To read your email in real-time as it comes in, the government requires a warrant. If you leave it on your ISP's mail server for longer than some period of time (not sure how long, but it's something longer than an hour and less than a month), then the email is treated as a document and can be obtained like any other record.
Normally a warrant to search a house, tap a phone or intercept email requires probable cause. However, this requirement is different if "a substantial purpose" of the investigation is foreign intelligence surveillance. In that case the warrant can be obtained with something less than probable cause under FISA as modified by USA Patriot Act (though there are still pretty stringent requirements; the gov doesn't get carte blanc to snoop on anybody)
Long story short, if you don't want it read, don't leave it on somebody else's server and don't do anything that would convince a judge that you pose a threat to the country.
Why not to use gmail, Yahoo! mail, etc. (Score:2)
This is very old news [eff.org].
More importantly, it's a good reason to avoid all e-mail hosting services like gmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc., until this is resolved.
Spammer (Score:5, Interesting)
Certainly there is easily enough evidence out there to obtain a search warrant.
And it's not like search warrants are difficult to obtain.
The only reason I can think of not to bother in this case would be because someone wanted to set a precedent. And who better to set one against than someone hated by everyone?
Laws need to be updated (Score:4, Informative)
But the one thing that has never changed since the dawn of written communication is this: If you don't want something read, then don't write it down. Especially if you're laundering money from the insecure and poorly-endowed... because that's just wrong!
Doesn't even apply here! (Score:3, Interesting)
If you send me a letter describing in great detail how you intend to blow up with on , that letter then becomes my property. I can pass it along to law enforcement agencies as I see fit, etc.
If you send me spam, I can then pass that spam along to law enforcement agencies as I see fit. If you give me a 3 lb brick of black-tar heroin, I can do the same.
This act affects electronic messages which are stored by a recipient and then siezed, not messages which are voluntarily submitted to law enforcement. There is very little you can do if someone else legally obtains evidence against you and then hands it over to someone else, save for a lawsuit against the individual in question.
That said, the defendant in this case (The US Government) will be defending this act to the end, regardless of whether or not the act violates personal liberties - it DOES appear to, but again, this act has absolutely no bearing here.
Yet Another Reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
A classic "standing" problem... (Score:3, Informative)
Is it a "search" as to you under the 4th amendment if the government reads your e-mail off the server it's stored on?
If it is a 4th amendment search, the government needs a search warrant or some "reasonable" excuse to make the search legal. If it's a search and it's not "reasonable," it's a Constitutional violation, and the evidence would have to be excluded under the judge-made "exclusionary rule." But there's the "as to you" part, as well. The courts won't let you assert someone else's 4th amendment rights; if they illegally kick in Joe's door down the street and find a bundle of dope with your name, address, and social security number printed on it, the government can't use it against Joe, but well, you're shit out of luck. Usually.
Once upon a time the courts had a fairly elaborate "standing" analysis, but ever since 60s when the 4th amendment stopped meaning what it says and started applying to "a socially reasonable expectation of privacy," the analysis is a little more complicated. Going back to the example above: would you have an expectation of privacy that society would find reasonable in keeping your drugs in Joe's house? The courts would say no-- first of all, it's dope; and second, you handed it over to a third person; for all you know, Joe could take your dope and run it straight to the police.
But the Courts have made it more complicated. If you're spending the night at Joe's house, then you, as an overnight guest, have a "socially reasonable" expectation of privacy. But if you're just there for a drug deal, you don't. The question in this case boils down to: do you have an expectation of privacy, that society considers reasonable, in your e-mail when it's stored on a public server?
There's really two ways you can go about answering this question: the first is what I guess you'd call an analyticial analysis: by storing your e-mail on a server, how easy is it for someone, anyone else to read it? How often does that happen? The second would be a values analysis: what do people use e-mail for? How private is it? How important is it to keep the government from reading your e-mail? Etc.
But you'll have to make up your own minds as to this question. I think the "reasonable expectation of privacy" analysis is bunk, and that the 4th amendment was never intended to protect mail or e-mail. But then I'm something of a strict constructionist myself.
Old News to Steve Jackson (Score:3, Interesting)
For all of the alledged "protections" congress has given electronic communication, they've all been mere extensions of protection for variations of wire-tapping. If the government can actually get the physical hardware in their hands, anything goes. There is no sense of protected files or folders on a disk drive.
Amendment IV, United States Constitution (Score:3, Insightful)
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, AND EFFECTS, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
In any case, they still DO need a warrant to search that 3rd party server. The warrant would simply have to describe the place to be searched, and specify the things to be seized, in accord with the ammendment.
There are lots of analogies: P.O. Box, Voice Mail, Tapped phone lines, Gym locker, direct ip-ip chat (with no brokering middleman server, except routers). Each one of them has a slightly different feel, but in each case it seems clear that the RIGHT thing to do is respect the person's privacy. That the email sits on a server with a delay does not seem relevant (any more than the latent speed of light transmission time when the sound is IN the phone lines)
However, until the authorities have been duly punished for violating the man's right to privacy, it would behoove those who WANT their rights protected to run their own mail servers (either in foreign, non-extraditing countries or in their own homes.)
http://james.apache.org/ [apache.org]
If electronic communications had existed at the time of the framing of the constitution, I really doubt they would have left gaps for the government to abuse our privacy by means of raiding electronic mailboxes.
PS -- It wouldn't hurt to use pgp encrypted mail
"a-l-w-a-y-s---d-r-i-n-k---y-o-u-r---o-v-a-l-t-i-
Re: (Score:2)
If I encrypt MY e-mail with whatever, I assume PGP, then send it to someone, they have to have a key to decrypt it. Does that mean everyone I know has to have my key and the knowledge/ability to decrypt the message? Also, can I do this with any e-mail? (i.e. webmail? or only Pop3? Only Exchange, only IMAP?)
Someone please explain.
Re:How I Learned to Stop Worrying... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
No, what they usually have is the consent of the other person, who doesn't care about your privacy. Additionally, there usually is no practical remedy if the person whose privacy is violated isn't the one that the evidence is used against, as the principal remedy for illegally seized evidence (exclusion at trial) can only be invoked by the person whose rights are violated. Evidenced seized i
Re: (Score:2)
> (in the legal way and the technical way) is to
> encrypt it and store it on someone else's computer.
As long as that persons machine isn't a laptop and they try to bring it through US customs.
Re:Sure I am guilty... (Score:5, Interesting)
Judge: "Very compelling evidence here. How did you come by it?"
Sherrif: "Me and the boys made it up. It seemed like the sort of thing he would do."
Judge: "Very compelling evidence here. How did you come by it?"
Sherrif: "One of our men went undercover and pretended to be his friend. He wasn't originally planning on doing it, but after our guy kept encouraging him, he managed to convince him to consider it. Then we nabbed him!"
Judge: "Very compelling evidence here. How did you come by it?"
Sherrif: "We broke down his door, surprising him in the act."
Judge: "Very fortunate! How did you know it was him?"
Sherrif: "Oh, we didn't. We just went down the line and kicked in all the doors on all the houses on the street until we found someone doing something guilty."
Judge: "Very compelling evidence here. How did you come by it?"
Sherrif: "We just held his head underwater until he thought he was drowning. We did it enough times, and he confessed to everything. He didn't even read the confession we prepared for him! He was just that eager to sign. Must have had a guilty concience or something."
[optional ending]
Judge: "Very fortunate! How did you know it was him?"
Sherrif: "Oh, we didn't. We just started torturing people. Eventually they always confess to SOMETHING..."
So let's review. In example #1, it matters how they got the evidence, since it matters that it actually be, you know, EVIDENCE. #2 is what is called "entrapment", and is kind of a manufactured guilt. (i. e. they woudn't have been guilty of anything except that an undercover officer went and tried to convince them to do something illegal.) #3 is an example of where [possibly] justice was done to one person, at the expense of the justice of everyone else. (How would you like to have your door kicked in some day by police, who then say "ok, you're clean. Just checking!" Would the knowledge that they MIGHT catch someone that way be enough to offset your outrage at having your privacy invaded and your posessions broken?) And finally, #4 kind of speaks for itself. (I hope.)
So yeah. The reason that there is a mindset that "how the evidence is gained matters as much as the guilt" is because it kinda does. Or how about this: Think of it from a logic perspective - Your proofs are only as strong as the axioms they are based on. Legal judgements only have as much justice as the evidence they are based on. So before handing out judgements, it's INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT to make sure that the evidence is all on the up-and-up. You are probably thinking of cases where "well, everyone knew he did it, who cares how they proved it? If he walks, it's on a technicality", but YOU CAN'T CONVICT SOMEONE BASED ON "everyone knows they did it." And you SHOULDN'T be able to. (That way leads to mob-rule.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Email should be protected. (Score:4, Informative)
It was protected as well. But it wasn't in his home, it was in the homes of the people he sent it to. He's claiming not that the government shouldn't be able to search his mail, but that the government shouldn't be able to search the mail of the people filing complaints about him even if they give permission for the search. In short, he's claiming that mail in someone else's mailbox belongs to him and he can control access to it. Which is wrong.