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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."
No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in the Public Domain don't you understand?
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.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
This is more of a question rather than comment. Is it legal for them to read snail mail at the post office? Its stored there until you get it delivered. If no, then this lawsuit has a point.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I wonder if it's possible to (successfully) sue whatever private entity gave up your email information (i.e. the "someone else's computer")...Seems like the government should be forced to get a warrant even for your email stored at your ISP...otherwise, your ISP should be liable for not protecting your personal information.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
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.
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
This is just a specific instantiation of a general problem with computers.
/. populace will probably view with more sympathy than the government, by claiming that email should be treated just like physical mail are really committing the same error as the government, who are basically acting as if they do have a place where they could grab a physical letter and therefore they can, just as if it were physically sitting somewhere.
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.
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.
"E-mail providers also routinely screen messages for spam, viruses and child pornography. That further undermines claims to the privacy of e-mail, government attorneys say."
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.
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).
Encryption. The apathetic always ask me, "Why encrypt your email/files?". This article is my answer to them.
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....
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I just read that the President wants to increase the size of the military in Iraq. Maybe someone should tell him about this "natural male enhancement" so we can use it there?
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Your assertion is not unlike suggesting that I have no expectation of privacy in postal mail because for a length of time it was in the posession of a Federal agency, the US Post Office.
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?
Some sleazebag spammer sends me spam. I complain to the authorities. Said authorities decide that the spammer is breaking the law (fraud, spam laws, whatever). And the spammer says that the e-mails can't be used as evidence against him, because it's his private communication? That's the craziest legal theory I've heard since SCO.
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.
The gov't can read my e-mail all they want. At least, they can try to. http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
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 at their word or the above scenario would definitely occur.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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 you produce. The same applies to traditional letters - i.e. it is only when their authenticity is questioned that proof becomes a problem.
If the authenticity of an email produced in court is questioned, be prepared to provide evidence of the audit trail showing where the email originated and the route by which it was sent to your computer. The audit trail would show if there had been any opportunity for someone to interfere with the email as they are usually sent between several servers before they reach their destination.
Email have raised problems for the courts. In the past, evidence would invariably take the form of an original signed document and if that was not available then a copy of that signed document could be substituted. The signature would be the key to proving the authenticity of the document (of course, the argument can still be made that the signature is a fake). The difference with email is that there is no such thing as an 'original' since the print-out is the end result of a technological process. It is the audit trail showing that process which can be used to persuade the court of the print-out's authenticity if this is challenged by your opponent.
Forensic computing services can help if it becomes necessary to prove that a hard copy of an email produced in court is genuine.
Email as court evidence
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.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Yes. It means that you and everyone you know are going to have to read the instructions on your mail client on how to encrypt and decrypt your mail. You can do it on any client that supports it, though most webmail clients do not directly (though you could write the email in a text editor, encrypt that, and attach the file to an email). You will all have to meet in order to exchange public keys securely and keep your private keys safe.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This is not the slightest bit new.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
The "Stored Communications Act of 1986" clearly needs to be updated, which is another example of why we need to keep a close eye on technology-specific legislation. Today's good idea becomes tomorrows loophole (for gov and criminals alike - both of which will take full advantage without thinking twice).
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!
My sig sucks.
Looking around it may not seem that bad, but since I've grown up with the following expectations I'll just repeat them:
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 at least once on the way out of the country (have been since the 70-80's see:echelon)
5. My internet communication is probably tapped domestically (if I gotta go through Mae west etc or any SF pop there's a good chance) and internationally at least once there's a sniffer present.
6. My electricity bill is public information (used as a 4th amendment allowance to search homes)
7. The expectation of anonymity of a person is no longer allowed (you MUST provide your identity if the secret^H^H^H^H^H^H police ask for it.)
Need I continue? I'm sure I could, but it just gets depressing after that point... did I say depressing? I mean It's great that this is happening! Why wouldn't I want the world to be a "safer" place?
In cases like these, you might want to give AnoNet a try.
Although everyone these days seems to be the target of a warrant-less tap. Sure, it won't hold up in court, but you may never see a court.
Except if you have a really bright light and decent software to pull apart the folded layers of letters.
Right now the bar may be set fairly high, but in the future, the fact that I am going home for Christmas may used as justification to persecute me. Worse, if the data is saved, it can be used against me in the future. "Nothing to hide" is just a euphemism for "doing right now what the government currently says is okay right now".
Correction to number 4: If any of your data happens to cross AT&T's pipes. Having AT&T as your ISP of course would put you at risk, but since so many ISPs in the US use AT&Ts pipes, many such would be vulnerable to illegal NSA spying without having AT&T directly affiliated. Traceroute for the win.
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.
This signature does not exist. It has never existed. It is all a figment of your imagination.
...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".
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
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.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
That e-mail doesn't really need the same protections. The thing is with e-mail, or indeed with any computer based communications, a solution exists: end to end encryption. When there's something you don't want someone to see, encrypt it at the sending computer and decrypt it on the receiving computer. Trust nothing in the middle. I basically assume that anything I send in cleartext my ISP can read if they feel like. Will they? No probably not, but they can and so I don't send stuff in the clear that I would mind if they saw. If it needs protecting, it's encrypted. For example I never access any system at work over an unencrypted link.
I'm not sure I'd want laws protecting it since it would likely include sysadmins as well as the government. It'd be a major problem at work if I couldn't access someone's e-mail. There are numerous occasions when a problem requires us to get in to someone else's e-mail box. It's all legal, the systems are owned by the university and we are the designated support. However if there were a privacy law saying we couldn't, that'd be problems. Or hell, imagine on a personal level. You run a little server that some friends have accounts on, including e-mail. Suppose it was similar to postal mail (federal felony) for messing with it. You'd want a situation where cating the wrong file could be a felony?
As I said, I think the answer lies in the technology. Since it is easy to use end-to-end encryption, it should be incumbent on the user to do that when the data is something that they don't want a third party to see.
This sounds like a pretty simple 4th amendment issue, phrased as:
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.
If that's how the court wants to rule it, then it would be pitifully easy to frame people simply by sending them encrypted data that they don't have the keys for.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The article isn't 100% clear but it doesn't sound to me as though the emails in question were spam. It seems more likely that they were communications relating to his business with incriminating evidence in them. He's being charged with mail fraud and money laundering, not with sending spam.
Hmmm...you're really dodging the OP's point though. HOW the evidence is obtained often goes directly to the question of credibility of the evidence. But we already have a method for challenging questionable evidence, and that is with testimony at trial. And I don't think anybody would dispute that improper evidence gathering should be admissible at a trial to undermine the credibility of the evidence thereby collected. But the question you are dodging is about evidence that is totally credible, but cannot be used because it was improperly collected. If the evidence gatherers make mistakes or commit wrongdoing, it is sensible to punish the evidence gatherers. But only in the United States does the law reward the criminal for the mistakes or wrongdoing of others. Clearly, the rationale is that rewarding the criminal punishes the evidence gatherers to the extent that the evidence gatherers really want the criminal to be convicted - but why is this the only legitimate remedy? Is there really nothing else that can deter evidence gatherer? You don't provide a good answer.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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,
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 admissable if the neighbours willingly allowed the search or the police had a warrant to search their premesis.
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.
How about starting here: Search warrants are based upon the location not on the owner or originator of the evidence, so whatever copyright or ownership issues you have really do not matter. If you leave a used condom in a public park after having relations with a prostitute that later turns up dead, should that evidence be inadmissible or require some special warrant before it is examined? Is it an unjustifiable "invasion of privacy" because they can find out about your sex life? OF COURSE NOT! If you are having sex with a prostitute in a public place and don't umm...clean up after yourself, or if you confess on the back of a postcard and send it outside your private domain you cannot expect to be afforded protection of privacy.
Hell, chances are your every move is being recorded as you do your Christmas shopping, and pretty much everywhere you walk on the streets of London in public view...and you expect that sending an UNENCRYPTED transmission through a PUBLIC network to an OUTSIDE computer--without the permission of the recipient I might add--should be protected under some sort of right to privacy? What makes email so much more special than a message on a postcard, or walking down the street with a bullhorn, or skywriting, or beating the sh!t out of Rodney King on a public street whilst being videotaped by a concerned observer behind a bush?
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.
You're having a hard time because they AREN'T THE SAME THING. If law enforcement monitored a telephone conversation--or an instant message conversation, or perhaps the packets of data in and out of your PC, in real time, unbeknownst to EITHER party involved in the exchange, then yes, that would be wiretapping and it would require a warrant. If you are a stalker and leave a dirty phone message on some lady's answering machine, and the lady freaks out and brings in the message to the police, then there is no need for a warrant. I think that when some dork mass mails me some penis enlargement advertisement that it is the same as the stalker leaving dirty messages on an answering machine--the only difference is the media.
In the infamous Secret Service seizure of Steve Jackson Games' Illuminati Online BBS system in 1990 (case resolved in 1993), the court found that the government reading unread emails on a machine by seizure of the machine was not "wire-tapping", in spite of arguments by the EFF that the end result is the same - the government sees your communication before you do.
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.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Notice that both telephone AND email communications (specifically noted for this discussion is definition #17) are listed. Most of Chapter 119 have them used together, meaning that they do have "similar legislation".
Generally, an owner is defined as the only person that can (legally) willfully give away something. Here, this is specified in (3)(b)(ii): "with the lawful consent of the originator or any addressee or intended recipient of such communication." Nobody else can do that: so the originator, addressee or recipient are the owners.
A custodian can usually be used to bypass directly involving the owner, usually for practical reasons. Using your car analogy, the owner is not necessarily in the car (could be a relative, rental company or employer) and the driver can still consent to a warrant-less search.
But, in this case, the ISP is treated as sort of a restricted custodian of the data: if they unintentionally obtain evidence of a crime, they can report it; if they are compelled to give up the data (such as a warrant); etc. But they can't just give it away.
And finally, IANAL.
This is not my sig.
4. Nothing to hide -- if you're not expecially interesting to the government...
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 to do option 4. Since either of those examples would take being able to predict the future, being 100% successful at it would be required - the government would be very interested indeed in a 90% successful psychic if they could catch one.
Recent studies on riots have shown that probably as many as 3 out of 4 people involved are just trying to slip away from the crowd, but want to do it gradually and casually because they fear pushing and shoving against the flow will draw the mob's attention to themselves. That fact alone means that there are lots of people currently on government watchlists who were effectively innocent of any intent. Even if we assume the police tend to concentrate on the more active leaders in a mob scenario, they are not going to be nearly 100% successful at singleing them out (if they were, they would have understood how many people just get tangled up in a riot many years ago, and we wouldn't have needed the studies).
Who is John Cabal?
They do so need a warrant. See: Amendment IV, United States Constitution
:-)
...uh... sure.
n -e" :-D
"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/
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-
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
From the article:
What this comes down to is the difference between a court order and a warrant and which one best fits the nature of electronic messages and the method by which they're delivered.
There is no privacy contract, social or otherwise, between the sender of an email and the computers that forward it to its recipient. Each forwarder may belong to different enterprises, each with its own usage and security policies, which may or may not include archiving your email for future scrutiny. If your email is forwarded by a computer that helps the government or publishes your email then you're hosed. Otherwise, I would argue that your email, stored on a physical medium on private property, should require a search warrant, much like retrieving a written letter from your office or home would.