Government Has a Right to Read Your Email?

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."

Comments

Re:Right to read

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The difference being that the US Mail has laws protecting it's privacy. FedEx, UPS, and your local mailserver simply don't. It's perfectly legal for them to snoop on a FedEx overnight envelope while it's stored at a FedEx warehouse or when it hits the central depository in Chicago.

Interesting thing

[gillbates]

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....

Re:Interesting thing

[meta-monkey]

No, that's not what this is about.

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.

Sorry, I know a "Bush is evil" post is an easy +5 on /., but you're barking up the wrong tree on this one.

Re:Right to read

[balsy2001]

I think this is only if Fedex lets them. My guess is that Fedex etal will say you can't haveinformation on our clients without a warrant/subpoena. Otherwise why not just station a lay enforcement officer at all FEdex depot to search everything for potential criminal activity. On a kind of related note, several of my friends used to work at a UPS center during college and they said their instructions from the company in the event of accidental opening was to put it back in the box and ignore it even if it was weed or something.

Re:What part of

[vertinox]

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?

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.

Re:Sure I am guilty...

[Mathonwy]

Are you kidding? The method by which the information was gathered is INCREDIBLY important to a case. It has to be. Some brief examples of why:

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.)

Spammer

[pluther]

Smart of them to go try this out against a spamming fraudster (or is that fraudulent spammer)?

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?

Doesn't even apply here!

[RvLeshrac]

You've all (or at least the vast majority of you) failed to notice that this case does not even invoke this act.

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...

[eno2001]

...why I say; run your own mail server. I do it. I've done it since 2001. I've had too many instances of incompetence at ISPs and large mail service providers losing my mail and not restoring it. Sure, they can read it on the way in or out, but then it's a different beast than actually getting onto my system without a warrant. Plus I have the added benefit of having a private mail system that is not accessible to anyone on the net as it's on a darknet used by friends and family. Simple solutions really. Until someone decides to make them "illegal".