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Judge Orders Deleted Emails Turned Over
Anonymous Coward writes "In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a subpoena sent to Google orders the turnover of the complete contents of a Gmail account, including deleted e-mail messages. The Judge has granted the subpoena and orders that all e-mail messages, including deleted messages, be divulged. Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages 'may remain in our offline backup systems' in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. So much for the Delete Forever button."
I TOLD YOU SO.
I've maintained before that Google retains far too much information to make the use of Gmail anything less than a full-blown privacy nightmare. (For more information, please look here and here.)
And now, the chickens have come home to roost. From TFA: A stunning victory for the Establishment and a horror show for private citizens everywhere. Welcome to 1984.
And before you start, please don't object that the person affected is a defendant in a criminal proceeding, because that's quite beside the point. The point is that Google has this information on you, and will hand it over upon request. This vindicates the caterwauling of all the privacy advocates concerning Google and Gmail, and establishes a dangerous legal precedent. Remember, as our 'inalienable' rights are systematically stripped away by the architects of the New World Order, more and more of the things you do become 'illegal'...and subject to criminal persecution...er...prosecution. It might not be long before you are being referred to as 'defendant'...what will you think of your Gmail account then?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
1. Stop using the web interface and enable POP
2. Start using a client and your favourite encryption software
All email messages exist in perpetuity. They can be stored as backups in any server that they touch between the sender & the receiver.
If you're concerned about the contents of your emails being divulged - USE (open/gnu/etc...)PGP!
If that is still too insecure for you, meet the recipient in the middle of the park for a strolling conversation; and don't forget the white noise generator.
...it makes much more sense to run your own mail server. That's what I do. I don't trust ANYONE but myself with my mail.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
With everything that's been going on lately, it sounds like the American government really wants to take Google down in the war of public opinion. The gov't just keeps trying to make them look worse and worse. And since the American courts typically just allow the gov't to do whatever it wants, they're winning.
Hey, I happen to know YOUR company does backups! You deleted your mail from the server, but you didn't hunt down those tapes in the vault, did you? Huh?
Does NO ONE remember Ollie North and the White House PROFS system? 20 years later, and people still think incriminating data will always just go away when you desire.
INFORMATION WANTS TO BE COPIED.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Someone think of the poor people that will have to read through all the spam that goes through one mailbox!!!
... I can picture the defense getting a 80GB archive tape and being told that was all messages recieved. Yes, 99.999% of them are spam. Enjoy.
Heck
Talk about burying the opposition in paperwork.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
BadAnalogyGuy, is that you?
This guy's the limit!
Google: The gmail documents may remain present in our offline backup system. ... with a torch.
IRS: I eventually had to go down to the cellar...
Google: That's the offline backup system's machine room.
IRS:
Google: Ah, the lights had probably gone.
IRS: So had the stairs.
Google: But you found the tape, didn't you?
IRS: Yes. It was backed up on paper tape stored in the bottom of a locked drawer beneath a PC04/PC05 tape reader with a dot-matrix printed sign on the door saying 'ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENSPEEPERS.' Ever thought of going into search technology?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Considering my first meeting today was regarding how best to redesign the mail system to make it easier to comply withsubpoenas in the future. Step one of that redesign: turn off the backups!
Just more proof that the 'e' in email doesn't stand for 'electronic', it's 'evidence'.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It's worth noting that this fight isn't over yet. The defendant has lost his motion to squash the subpoena based on a privileged communications argument. That's really not surprising... the argument is tantamount to saying "I receive letters from my lawyer in the mail, so you can't have any of my mail." It's just not gonna fly in our civil justice system which has very liberal rules of discovery.
However, based on the article Google has not yet had the opportunity to respond to the subpoena. The third party can always move to squash, and that's where things will get interesting. Will Google be able to convince the court that certain messages are deleted and thus not retrievable. Or, perhaps, that the defendant believed he was deleting the messages and thus deserves to have the messages kept under lock?
These are questions only Google, as the third party, can raise. Now that the judge has issued the subpoena, Google is in a position to actually make those motions. And, if my legal education is worth anything, my money says Google/defendant will appeal if they lose because it's such a new area of the law that an Appeals Court really ought to announce a legal precedence.
Only 120 characters... who can summarize their entire world understanding in 120 characters?!
1. Buy stamps, envelopes & paper
2. Use the Postal Service
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Yippee? SO they're asking for older backups from Google (as much as they have) in order too look at e-mail that may have been deleted in some sort of scramble before the order was in place. So what? Guess what? They order a history of transactions from your bank; They order a history of credit card purchases; They order a list of telephone calls from your telephone carrier; They order a list history from your ISP or employer.
So what? They're asking for a bit of a backlog. This is no surprise
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Encrypt away, they'll subpoena the email, you're right. Then they'll subpoena the passphrase. If you don't comply with the subpoena for the passphrase, they'll obtain a search warrant, and find where you wrote it down, admit it, its in a card in your wallet, or in some pass store software, isn't it? Then they'll use good old fashioned forensics to decrypt the shadow cache and drag a list of passwords on your server out in the open.
And finally, if that doesn't work, they'll throw you in jail for contempt of court until such time as you do remember your passphrase.
Don't underestimate the power of the government to discover secrets, they've been in the business for years.
What concerns me more is this enforced compliance with a subpoena for a crime that might have been committed, but for which they have to conduct a search to determine if evidence exists that a crime was committed. This thing stinks to high heaven of unconstitutional and illegal search and seizure. Where are the lawyers screaming habeas corpus?
Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability: without Availability the other two are assured, as is Bankruptcy.
The moral of this story is to never write down anything you don't want copied or seen by other eyes. I mean, look at the ancient Egyptians. We are reading their words today and they are hidden in booby-trapped tombs!
There's now more spam than legitamate email in the world, right? And we're all using spam filters, yes? Why not forward all your spam to a gmail account. If enough of us do it, google will see such a drop in SNR that there won't be any point storing all those old emails. What's that you say? Still not enough data to fill the mighty google? Set your random number generator to stun...
Does anybody use voice mail provided to them from their cell phone or landline phone provider?
Where is that data stored?
Has any telco been ordered by a court to turn over that voice data?
Just curious...
Look folks.. Privacy simply does not exist. You'll get your search terms read, email copied, if you encrypt you have to give over the keys and if you don't then you get put into prison anyway.
Your phone will be tapped, mobile will be tracked, cars followed with "traffic enforcement cameras". Your DNA will be on file, biometrics saved and your Underground trips logged.
Everywhere you go there are CCTV cameras, face recognition. Your purchases are tracked with credit cards, store loyalty cards and RFID tags. Your bank transactions are flagged if they look interesting and the tax people peer into your account looking for money that suddenly appears.
1984 got here, oh, 22 years ago now...
Sure, maybe this time they're trying to protect you (though it seems it's actually more of a tax dispute). The possibility of abuse is huge and scary.
It might be that reading deleted emails, or wiretapping American citizens, or planting infiltrators in protest groups, will save some lives. You know what? Too bad. We hear all the time how "freedom has costs" and we honor "the greatest generation" and the current military for being willing to risk their lives for freedom. Here's the kicker: If you live in a free society, you must tolerate risks in the name of freedom too.
There's a chance unbridled surveillance will prevent a terrorist attack. There's a much higher chance that unbridled surveillance will destroy the Republic as we know it. I am for preserving the liberties that make the nation worth living in.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption
next we will all be saying that it is alright that the gov't has our phone lines all tapped, just on the off chance a terrorist might call us and ask for help. why don't we all just back up all of our data online, let them read it all, and find the horrible people then.
now for me, If you live in a free society, you must tolerate risks in the name of freedom too. this sounds more reasonable. forget the injustices we "must" suffer to remain safe, and start taking a few more risks to ensure that we remain free. otherwise our government becomes no better than the old soviet government or the governmtner that orwell created in 1984 with big brother watching over us.
"{09f911029d74e35b/==\d84156c5635688c0}"
Google warns that "delete forever" does not mean that the message is necessarily gone. Their offline backup servers may contain copies of your messages in perpetuity. Can you think of why this might be?
Because I can. Like any responsible data company, they don't want you to lose important data... so they back it up.
Google isn't being exactly 100% altruistic. They are a corporation, so if you want to determine their motivation for any particular thing, look at what motivates all corporations: money.
They keep a massive amount of data, and not particularly because they are concerned about your data recovery needs, but because the massive amount of data that they can collect and associate with you allows them to better design targeted marketing (ads) directly to you.
Based on the emails that you send and the emails that you receive, they can determine if you are more likely to be interested in this service or that product. They can shoot advertisements at you like a sniper rifle, as opposed to birdshot.
Keeping all that data indefinitely allows them to constantly index and profile you for advertising purposes. It allows them to make money.
On the flip side of that, people are more likely to trust Google with that profitable data if Google fights tooth and nail to ensure the privacy of users, so barring severe punishment from the government, it makes sense for Google to safeguard users' data from the prying eyes of Big Brother.
Two hundred and some years ago some guys got all fed up with how they were being treated and so they wrote to the king, "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to throw off the political bonds that have connected them with another..." Well, it turns out that the king wasn't all that gracious about the whole thing and there was a lot of killing and other "lashing out" kinds of behaviors.
Our boys finally prevailed and they realized that any government (even their new government) can fall into this same oppressive mindset, so they put some things in their new constitution that might either prevent oppression altogether, or at least provide a means for citizens to throw off oppression if it occurs.One of those things is privacy. Our boys knew that if King George had been able to station a soldier in every private home, their little revolution would never have gotten off the ground.
We hear a lot of the phrase, "Who cares, I've got nothing to hide." Let's put the shoe on the other foot and ask, "If the government is doing such a good job of protecting us and not oppressing anyone, why should they fear their citizens having a lot of privacy?" In other words, the government's desire to "station a soldier" in eveyone's computer might indicate that they feel they should have something to fear.They would know best, after all.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
I never understood what the big deal is with privacy.
The big deal is that no one in this world is free from having committed actions that many others would find objectionable. There are any number of everyday activities that you do everyday that would fall into this catagory. Eat a burger lately, PETA would like to know who you are. You have a DNA gene that predisposes you to a certain disease, your health insurance company sure would like to know that. You look at hardcore (but legal) porn, the police might like to keep tabs on you. You show interest in the plight of people who might be "associated with terrorism", all sorts of agencies would love to gather what they can about you.
These are just a few off the top of my head. Heck, here's a few more: a potential landlord would surely like a look at your bank balance. Your boyfriend/girlfriend might be interested in your visits to medical clinics. Your boss might like to know how much spare time you have on weekends. Your racist neighbour might like to know about your ethnic friends. Your parents might like to track where you go on your own time. And on and on and on...
All of your actions could be legal and ethical, but that doesn't stop people who frown upon (or could benefit from) your legitimate actions from using this information against you in some way. Do you really want people you don't like you, and that you don't like, knowing everything about you?
Privacy is something that may not be required in the distant future, when humanity evolves to the point where we no longer judge one another, and there exists no reason for fear of recrimmonations for holding beliefs and taking actions that are different than anyone else's. Human nature may never allow us to ever reach this level of trust and comfort with our fellow man. So until that happens, I will value privacy until it is no longer required.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
I'm not buying it. Here's a way to test your theory. Delete an email message with a large pdf attachment. Wait a few days and contact Google. Tell them you had a hard drive failure and a message you deleted contained the only copy of your Ph.D. thesis. Beg, plead, cajole. Offer them anything.
I'll bet you a beer you won't get the message back. Google's long-term data retention policies have nothing to do with altruistic measures to protect users from data loss.
I'm going to install cameras throughout your house. I don't see how this will harm you unless you're growing weed or bringing home prostitutes.
I'm going to install a satellite phone/monitor/GPS on your car that will phone the police if you exceed the current speed limit. I don't see how this will harm you unless you're breaking the speed limit.
I'm going to install a keystroke logger on your computer that will record everything you type. I don't see how this will harm you unless you use your computer to transfer money for gangsters.
I'm going to log every packet your computer sends that leaves the USA (Oh, wait, the NSA beat me to it...). I don't see how this will harm you unless you're secretly communicating with al Qaeda.
I'm going to steam every piece of mail that arrives in your mailbox open and photocopy it before it gets to you. I don't see how this will harm you unless you were the bastard who was sending the Anthrax letters.
I'm going to put a rootkit on that CD you bought that will contact me if you try to copy it and then break your computer. I don't see how this will harm you unless you like to rip and share music illegally.
Have I made my point?
http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2283
See if you can understand the implications?
Question one: Does someone that refuses to implicate himself in a government witchhunt prove he is guilty?
Does someone that denies he is involved in the communist party mean he is guilty?
The point is that any american that is worth his salt SHOULD deny telling the government anything for fear that failure to state his position on something will be construed as anything other than defending his constutuional rights. Check www.papersplease.org for more information.
Erik