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The Privacy of Email
An Anonymous Coward writes "A U.S. appeals court in Ohio has ruled that e-mail messages stored on Internet servers are protected by the Constitution as are telephone conversations and that a federal law permitting warrantless secret searches of e-mail violates the Fourth Amendment.
'The Stored Communications Act is very important,' former federal prosecutor and counter-terrorism specialist Andrew McCarthy told United Press International. But the future of the law now hangs in the balance."
I thought this balanced out to "States Secret", or better put, "You get privacy until we decide you don't need it"
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/
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"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I have a few doubts. There are billions of emails flying about constantly. Anyone who beleives they can be effectivelly monitored has to be kidding themselves, so how useful is a law that says you can't do this?
Besides, if you are convicted, or suspected of crime, they can always obtain legal access to your mails, regardless, just as they could anything else you owned.
Perhaps I haven't had time to grow a sufficiently impressive tin foil hat, but I am given to think the whole idea is just plain silly.
You might as well pass laws that say you aren't allowed to follow the movement of a grain of silt in the Amazon.
Reality is that which, when we cease to believe in it, still exists. - Philip K Dick
I do like the "Where the third party is not expected to access the e-mails in the normal course of business ... the party (sending them) maintains a reasonable expectation of privacy." bit. We need more decisions like this, if we want to remain an even somewhat free society.
Despite the torrent of "email isn't private, and only stupid people think it is" posts that will follow, if a monkey at the local ISP took sensitive customer emails (to each other, not to the company) that he had plucked from their servers and posted them to a blog or whatever, there would be an outcry, criminal investigation, lawsuit, and (fake) apologies. If the prosecutor's own dirty emails to his wife|mistress|whatever were publicized, the prosecutor would suddenly discover that a crime had been committed.
When it comes to private parties, either communication is private, or it isn't. If it isn't, then Joe Schmoe who works at AOL or the local ISP can read customers' emails at random and post the amusing bits to a public forum. Anything Joe Schmoe can't legally do, his brother Officer Jim needs a warrant to do. If Officer Jim doesn't need a warrant to do it, that means Joe the private citizen can do it with impunity.
What we're saying is, "you have an expectation of privacy in your private affairs, unless it's a police eyeball/eardrum, and in those cases you have no expectation of privacy because your action was public and they don't need a warrant." Bullshit. Anything the police don't need a warrant for is something every single private citizen should be able to do with impunity. Anything we don't want the public doing (privacy-wise) is something the police should need a warrant to do. Otherwise you're giving police and prosecutors the power to arbitrarily target anytone they want, without any oversight at all. This isn't complicated, people. I can understand why they would ask for it, but not why we would be so stupid as to give it to them.
By your arguement, nobody should expect privacy when talking on the phone since they didn't take steps to encrypt their phonecalls so wiretapping should be enirely acceptable. Or if your arguement only applicable to emails?...
There is no more expectation of privacy in a plaintext email than there is in an open-face postcard.
I'm sorry but that is utter nonsense. Maybe not to you, and maybe not to who ever modded your comment up. I don't expect anyone to read my email other than the recipient. That's an expectation. I don't see how anyone who doesn't open my email will be able to read it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but its not a typical part of an email server to display the contents of all messages passing through it onto a monitor somewhere is it?
No, I'd say its absolutely nothing like sending an open postcard.
If you want privacy, take steps to encrypt it, not unlike putting a letter in a sealed envelope (as it pertains to the law, not ease of circumvention). This will be overturned, and with good reason.
Yeah I don't think this is reasonable either.. thats like saying if you don't want to be searched hide your stuff better. Utter nonsense.
The ruling doesn't say that e-mail is off limits. All the court said was that there is nothing special about e-mail or phone calls. They are still grounds to be seized, but those wanting the information (FBI, prosecutors, etc) must go through due process to obtain them. If they get a warrant they can seize e-mail all they want.
Letters in the mail? Sealed with glue. Glue. Wow. You must not have much expectation of privacy there, otherwise you would've used a more robust method of ensuring your privacy. Even your phone calls are unencryped, sent as electrical impulses over wires and cables. Is it okay to listen to and record cellphone conversations, because they are transmitted through the air? If not, why not? If people wanted security, they wouldn't have transmitted those radio waves all over the place. People are so stupid.
It's true that we have laws against most (or all) of this type of surveillance. But it's just to protect the stupid people. I think that anytime it's possible to intercept your message, everyone should be able to do so, no warrant or probable cause needed, and use it in any way they want. That's the only way people will stop being so stupid that they think they have an expectation of privacy.
Thank you. This is the point nobody seems to be getting. Nobody is saying that emails can't be used as evidence, but that in order for them to be used, the cops must go through the proper procedures. If they don't use proper procedures to obtain the email, then it is inadmissible in court. Same goes for the telephone. Just as it is trivially easy for the cops to tap your phone, they are not allowed to do it unless they go through the proper procedures for obtaining a warrant. Saying that you should just encrypt your email if you want it to stay private is the same as saying you should build a 20 foot concrete wall around your house if you don't want them doing illegal searches of your property.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
And it's high time we remembered that. I for one would rather see, or even be killed in, another 9/11 than see us continue as we have. We Americans have become far too cowardly when it comes to defending our own freedoms lately, particularly against our own government.
When I send a postcard, I have good faith that nobody along the way (mail carrier, other postal worker, OCR systems) will read what I have written. However, if someone or something handling my postcard along its journey really wanted to read the contents, to do so would be relatively easy.
It's the same case with a plaintext e-mail. I have good faith that no system administrators or automated monitoring systems will read my plaintext e-mail along its journey, but if someone really wanted to read the contents, to do so would be relatively easy.
Preventing this requires encryption for e-mail, and for tangible mail either a sealed letter (not much of a roadblock for the determined), or by actually encrypting the text I write on the postcard.
So yeah, there are some similiarities in my mind.
I was going to mod you up but I decided to comment instead. I wish more people got that. While I don't think that we're at the torches-and-pitchforks, ruby-ridge-bunker stage, I can see how people would get there from here.
We're operating under the specious principle that if we restrict freedoms in the name of preventing terrorism, we will be safer. Not even a LITTLE. All this does is cause inconvenience and infringe on the civil rights that our founding fathers found so essential to the existence of our country. I took a vacation last week that took me out of the USA, and even I, not being a trained "terrorist", figured out about a dozen ways that I could have gotten a weapon/explosive on the plane. It's not helping at all. Suicide bombers are happy to be martyrs for a cause they believe in; shouldn't we be ready to do the same if we REALLY want to fight fire with fire?
Oh, wait, dying for your country is only for the poor. What was I thinking?
MOD PARENT UP, other people.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
On the question of airline security, I encourage you all to perform the same little experiment I do. I will often leave a golf ball mark repair tool in my pocket while going through security. This is a piece of soft steel, about 3 inches long, 1/2 inch wide, and about 1/16 inch thick, with prongs on it. In other words, it has more metal in it than a box cutter.
In my travels, this tool has -never- been detected by the metal detectors. I've run this experiment about 6 times now, through SFO, LAX, DFW and O'hare.
The laptops that flood onto planes have plenty of nooks and crannies in which blades could be secreted. A blade fits in the crevice between my battery and the wall of the case. Since this is vertical when it goes through the Xray, I have no doubt that it would pass.
The much vaunted liquid explosives that are causing us to fear sippy cups are a non-starter. Google the reaction, it starts with instructions on the order of "collect 5 gallons of ice. Mix reagents carefully, and stir for 45 minutes. " I think I can determine a more robust security procedure than forbidding water bottles.
When do we take our country back from the idiots?
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad."
This continuous fearmongering by our government is being used to subdue our people. This mindset of "If you dont submit to this injustice or that that the terrorists win" is ruining our country. Unfortunately, by and large, the citizens of our country are too uneducated or apathetic to see it and do something about it. This constant BS about "If you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide...", people/media/govt insinuates that because people value their freedom and privacy, there must be something wrong with them, or they are terrorist agents. Thats not the case. The founding fathers didnt place caveats on the Constitution, because it was this sort of thing they were trying to get away from when they left England.
The thing that makes me so sick about this is that I remember clearly Bush saying on 9/11 that we wont let these terrorists change our way of life. But that was a bald faced lie. Because he and the rest of the government set to work to do just that. That being the case, the terrorists have already won. They have fundamentally changed the American way of life, for the worst.
If we are to win the "War on Terror" the first step is to restore Freedom and the Constitution. Then we can deal with everything else.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. --James Madison
I invite you to try this in the UK... if you like a firm frisking. Here in the UK the gate detectors are pinging on your watch strap... let alone golf tools. And just like the US, our border officials leave their sense of humour at home. Rich
They make hard plastic and fiberglass knives now, too. Not sure what the metal detectors are supposed to do about them.
Sure, they're not as sturdy as metal knives -- I wouldn't want to use one as a pocketknife, because it would get dull -- but you can make a hell of a single- or few-use stiletto out of one.
The crap at the airports is just security theater. They go around confiscating people's pen-knives and soda cups, because for some strange reason people feel safer when their pen-knives and soda cups are confiscated. The real terrorists have lots of ways of getting instruments of mayhem through, if they want to.
If we wanted real airline security, we'd stop putting all our faith in expensive gadgets and employ more (and pay substantially more, so we can stop getting idiots) human beings, so that every single passenger gets an interview before they get on the plane. People are substantially better at detecting the intentions of other people than machines are, based on many more possible factors. The Israelis have had lots of luck with approaches like this, but the fact is in the West, we really don't want security, we want the appearance of, and feeling of, security.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."