US Wants Courts to OK Warrantless Email Snooping 476
Erris writes "The Register is reporting that the US government is seeking unprecedented access to private communications between citizens. 'On October 8, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati granted the government's request for a full-panel hearing in United States v. Warshak case centering on the right of privacy for stored electronic communications. ... the position that the United States government is taking if accepted, may mean that the government can read anybody's email at any time without a warrant. The most distressing argument the government makes in the Warshak case is that the government need not follow the Fourth Amendment in reading emails sent by or through most commercial ISPs. The terms of service (TOS) of many ISPs permit those ISPs to monitor user activities to prevent fraud, enforce the TOS, or protect the ISP or others, or to comply with legal process. If you use an ISP and the ISP may monitor what you do, then you have waived any and all constitutional privacy rights in any communications or other use of the ISP.'"
Re:"Land of the Free" (Score:5, Interesting)
What privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)
The far more impacting (and interesting) legal question is how the courts are going to view the 4th amendment (and others) in light of the way communications are stored for eternity on the internet. A traditional approach seems unwise, since the way ISPs word their terms of service make it so your data practically falls under the "open fields" doctrine for purposes of search and seizure. On the other end of the spectrum, I don't want police investigations entirely shut down just because we want heightened protections for data that we keep in essentially insecure methods.
If you are that worried about privacy, use PGP or GPG.
Foreign emails too? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Land of the Free" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not so fast (Score:1, Interesting)
Honestly, as a Canadian who's company relies entirely on rented data center space. We've chosen not to put any of our services in the US because we're afraid of your Government. It seems every other day they've got a new reason why they need to look at even more data belonging to anyone they want.
Re:Outrageous conclusion? (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a reason why every year we are subject to more laws than the year before. There's a reason why every year government spends more than the year before. There's a reason why every year power is concentrated further into the hands of the few. There's a reason why every year you are less free than the year before.
What could the reason be? Here's a hint: It ain't because making government bigger is unprofitable for the people in the business of government.
Re:What privacy? (Score:1, Interesting)
He is even so proud to admit he was in the WH with bush on his image for the company.
Re:"Think about it" (Score:3, Interesting)
If there's one thing I learned during my courses there (I couldn't even do a halfway decent statistic anymore, to be honest), it's that facts aren't facts until you can prove they are. No matter how solid they look, even if netcraft confirms it (even if netcraft doesn't), make sure it's not just circle-jerk. If A postulates something and B's only confirmation is that A said it, B hasn't said anything at all.
Unfortunately, you're right in one thing: We don't need proof to operate. All we want is our prejudices being confirmed somehow. You can see it here, even. Make up a story of $evil_corp slaughtering baby squids for cheap ink and watch people jump on it.
Re:Let them read... my headers. (Score:3, Interesting)
I could care less about my public mailing list messages, it's the other email that matters.
Is DHS going to really put me on a watch list because of my contributions to Project Gutenberg, Plucker, the core Mediawiki code or dozens of my other contributions? Not likely.
Are they going to put me on a watch list because of my political affiliations? My emails pointing out the egregious flaws in our administration? The methods people can use to personally protect themselves from an oppressive government? You bet. (I'm already on that list, no-doubt).
And if there are two standards, and users want secure email, they decide on the one with the broadest penetration... and that is GPG (i.e. works on all platforms, plugins for all clients, freely available, fully OSS, etc.)
Re:What privacy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe in Deadwood (which I never watched), ISPs are state actors, but not in the U.S.
I do however see the point you are trying to make. Unfortunately, I don't think the line is so easily draw with ISPs as to when they may be doing "state action" and when they are private companies asserting their position of strength over the consumer. At least, the world has come a long way since Marsh v. Alabama. [wikipedia.org]
Apple logo and Turing. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly enough until recently it was standard practice for western governments to "outlaw encryption". Before public key encryption came along some of the 'founding farthers' of computer science had worked out how to crack most types of encryption with relative ease and on the side they built computers with meccano sets that calculated trajectory tables.
As a direct result of the German and Japaneese "enigma" machines that they reverse engineered the allies were able to manipulate submarines into surfacing where they wanted thus keeping the Atlantic open for the merchant navy, the icing on the cake came when they used the same methods to put the Japanese fleet in the desired position for the allied ambush at the battle of Midway.
The tragedy is that after the war href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing">Alan Turing was hounded by his own goverment because he was homosexual to the extent of being chemically castrated by order of the court, officially he suicided but it is also possible he was murdered or accidently poisioned himself (like any self respecting geek he kept chemicals in the kitchen fridge).
Encryption technology was (still is?) regarded as a "munition", you could (still can?) be charged with treason here in Australia and the US/UK had (have?) similar rules. Exporting encryption software from the US was a big deal in the early 90's, the guy who came up with PGP had plenty of hassles in this area and there was mass confusion by MS and others about the strength of the encryption that could be exported (IBM had been working with spooks for decades and did not seem to be as confused). First you were not allowed to export anything, then it was restiricted to 48bit, then it was 128bit, I lost track after 1028bit because the government basically gave up trying to control it in the mid nineties, it was simply too usefull to banks in particular and bussiness in general.
IMHO the PGP guy deserves some of the credit for bringing the issue to light but it was inevitable that governments would lose interest in "outlawing" encryption since with modern encryption methods, having access to the algorithm does not help you to decrypt the text without the private key, and the public key only allows you to encryt text - it's a whole other kind of "enigma" to the ones solved at Betchly Park and elsewhere. Once you have the algorithim you can make the bit strength anything you like and IIRC the algorithim has been public knowledge since the 70's. Probably the last vestige of these laws that is noticable today is reflected in the difficulty and often illeaglity of encrypting voice communications without some sort of government key escrow.
To sum up: Freedom is a state of mind [lyricsfreak.com], everything else is constrained by the shackles and barbs of society.
Trivia: It has been speculated that the apple logo is a tribute to Turing because he died from eating an apple contaminated with cyanide.
Re:"Land of the Free" (Score:1, Interesting)
Freedom is being able to have as many kids as you can afford, or not to have any.
Freedom is living where you can afford and want to live.
Freedom is saying what you want without fear of being sent to a re-education camp.
Freedom is being able to protest without being run over by a tank.
Freedom is being able travel from place to place as you please.
Freedom is being able to defend yourself with your own firearm.
Freedom is being able to vote for who you want to run the government.
To name just a few.
Sure, all these freedoms need to be exercised responsibly and sometimes the implementation is flawed, a point that many people use to argue that these really do not exist. But those people are perennial complainers who are probably sympathetic to anarchism.
Whether or not the government reads your email, which is probably already read by your ISP, is a fairly trivial concern when compared to many other things the government could do. And if it bothers you, there is a process (if you can convince enough people) to end the practice which is to change the government by voting.
But to stand up and shout Nazi, Fascism, Dictatorship, and/or make comparisons to other nations that are patently not free whenever the government does something you don't like, makes you look like a left wing, tin foil hat, nut case.
Of course, you are free to do that too.
Time to think about SSL/TLS and GPG (Score:1, Interesting)
Between the problem of spam and the governments propensity to monitor communications I'm thinking that this the way most mailservers should be configured going forward. I believe that Americans still have a right to privacy but obviously the government differs so we must guarantee that right for ourselves.
Re:Right.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Some do. The stupid ones that keep getting caught do.
The rest (including the successful ones) either don't use email at all, or they use all the best privacy-protecting tools available.
Re:"Think about it" (Score:4, Interesting)
Your comment about "followers" of Security Focus is way off base. Outside of the world of artificially constructed arguments on TV, people aren't "followers" of news outlets. We are readers or subscribers or viewers, but we're not "followers." You might want to re-evaluate how you select and scrutinize your news.
PS: I'll note that I've been saying for years that it's imperative for stand-alone personal MTAs to remain viable, and this is why. Routine, passive end-to-end encryption is the way that we make this impractical.
Re:Postcard/email analogy... (Score:4, Interesting)
The entire opinion can be found at http://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/warshak_v_usa/6th_circuit_decision_upholding_injunction.pdf [eff.org]
Re:pardon? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, he can't. Nor can he pardon anyone else "in cases of impeachment." From Aricle II, Section 2 :
Note that it doesn't say anywhere that impeachment cannot be done after the end of an administration.
Nor, in practice, can he pardon war crimes, as they are globally enforceable. It's the war crimes charges that will eventually put these clowns in jail.
Re:"Land of the Free" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Postcard/envelope analogy (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Think about it" (Score:3, Interesting)
As for privacy, it is only needed because some people have more power to gather and act on information than others. No one has a right to be able to hide their embarrassment, they have a right not to do embarrassing things. If we could all see what everyone was doing, including what everyone was doing about what everyone else was doing, then no one could abuse the information they gathered, because everyone would know they had abused it. Privacy is a stopgap measure.