New York Judge OKs Warrant To Search Entire Gmail Account 150
jfruh writes While several U.S. judges have refused overly broad warrants that sought to grant police access to a suspect's complete Gmail account, a federal judge in New York State OK'd such an order this week. Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein argued that a search of this type was no more invasive than the long-established practice of granting a warrant to copy and search the entire contents of a hard drive, and that alternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, risked excluding information that trained investigators could locate.
Example of slippery slope (Score:4, Interesting)
Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein argued that a search of this type was no more invasive than the long-established practice of granting a warrant to copy and search the entire contents of a hard drive, and that alternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, ....
So, if a judge years ago did not allow the searching of a hard drive, this judge wouldn't have anything to stand on.
See, when the cops are allowed to do something seemingly little, then it allows for something else seemingly little, and so on and so on.
Our freedoms and liberties are being chipped away everyday.
Back during the Bush admin when folks were cautioning about the increased Executive powers, they were labeled "UnAmerican", "Liberal" or some other non-sense. When it was pointed out that the next Administration would get those same powers - meaning a Democrat may get them (and did) - it went over their heads.
And then there are the folks who discount the "Slippery Slope" argument as a logical fallacy.
Well, here you go.
I am concerned as to how far this will go in the future. And I hope the ACLU and EFF is all over this.
Two sides to this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow (Score:5, Interesting)
It always seems like you're on the side of the government, whether it's the NSA or what have you.
Often, yes. You see, I actually understand the design of the US government. It's built to continually revise and improve, and it's been doing so for over 200 years. On the other hand, your opinions have been forming for less than a century, and since you're only a single person, you've undergone far fewer revision cycles, all of which have been from a very limited perspective.
For example:
Also, any warrant asking to just search the entire house should be rejected, too.
Is that just, though? It may appeal to your sense of privacy, but would it appeal to your sense of justice to know that any criminal could effectively conceal evidence by simply putting it in a large enough box? How would your neighbors feel about it, knowing that you could be seen kidnapping their children, and the police could do nothing because they wouldn't know what room they're being held in?
Sure, the examples are hypothetical, but the underlying issue of deciding what is right predates your consideration by quite a long while. The best we have so far is a system where certain activities are absolutely permitted, and certain activities are absolutely forbidden, and deciding which category a given situation fits into falls to a judge whose primary interest is to bring the legal precedent closer to a state that everyone considers to be fair. It's not perfect, and likely will never be perfect, but it's closer than having Random Internet Guy simply decide that privacy trumps justice, because he says so.
Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow (Score:5, Interesting)
As in this case, they'd have to get as narrow a warrant as possible, specifying that they're searching for the weapon and not, say, evidence of tax fraud. Of course, if they found readily-visible evidence of such fraud during the course of the authorized search, they are not required to ignore it.
This is the one spot where I trip up a little, and have to wonder if we need slightly different protocols. How does the plain-sight doctrine work for digital media? In effect, every single email is equally 'visible'. The analogy to a house in the real world breaks down utterly here, and it's not clear how to fix that. What happens if they find emails with evidence of tax-fraud? Were those emails in plain sight? I agree that the scope is entirely reasonable for the necessary search – but I have to wonder how they would handle evidence of something they had no justification to search for? Law enforcement's penchant for parallel reconstruction (aka perjury) suggests they are very likely to use this information. Perhaps if it were understood that any future evidence brought for a different crime, and for which the defendant could demonstrate there was evidence within the email trawl, were assumed to be poisoned fruit, then we might have some better assurances. But there are some pretty obvious flaws with that kind of approach too...