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NJ Supreme Court Rules For Internet Privacy
dprovine writes "The New Jersey Supreme Court
has ruled that ISPs can't release customer information without a warrant. The unanimous decision reads in part 'We now hold that citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy protected by Article I ... of the New Jersey Constitution, in the subscriber information they provide to Internet service providers — just as New Jersey citizens have a privacy interest in their bank records stored by banks and telephone billing records kept by phone companies.'"
I'm not a lawyer but I thought precedence was set for this in US Vs Forrester where a $10 million drug operation had their e-mail, phone and IP address records obtained from their ISP without a warrant. They were guilty but not until the court case.
This happened just last year. How are they going to reconcile these two rulings?
My work here is dung.
But those poor folks still have to live in New Jersey.
now lets get the national supreme court to agree, then we'll be getting somewhere!
The difference here is that this is State court, not Federal court. This ruling will have no effect on any Federal case made in or against citizens of New Jersey. It does have precedence over any State or Municipal actions made in New Jersey.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Unless the authorities get a warrant. Surely that's the way it should be?
simon
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
So next time they'll get the correct warrant-- and STILL toss her butt in jail. I can live with that. As a creepy aside, I believe I went to high school with this chick.
Cogito Ergo Sum
Sure! like everyone can deal drugs and hide dead bodies in their houses without the fear of getting caught, just because the police can not search your house without a warrant.
From what I understand law enforcement can still get the needed information from your ISP. They just have to have a warrant first.
Deze sig is in 't Nederlands geschreven.
AT&T's main NOC is in NJ. This is the NOC that handles most of their T1 traffic and troubles. They also have a smaller one in Kentucky, but the main one is in New Jersey.
I doubt real world warrants are as agonized and debated as on Law and Order. The reality is more likely that they're handed out without much coaxing, since it helps propagate the system (with warrants leading to charges leading to trials leading to collection of fees and justifying salaries).
More Twoson than Cupertino
Of course, we've all known this made sense from the beginning. Was anyone really waiting for confirmation from the powers that be?
Comcast at least, won't now release subscriber information without a subpoena.This ruling requires that a grand jury must issue the subpoena not a municipal court. This raises the barrier quite a bit. The ruling is at:http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/supreme/A-105-06%20State%20v%20Shirley%20Reid.pdf
Technology knows no bounds I tell you.
Your numbers of warrants approved assume that any time a member of law enforcement wants ISP records or some such thing, they ask for a warrant. In reality, they aren't going to do so if they have absolutely no evidence other than the guys Arab-sounding name or something. If no warrant is required, then why not just listen to everyone? Nothing is stopping them.
The text of the NJ court ruling is here: http://abajournal.com/files/A-105-06_State_v_Shirley_Reid.pdf
At least from my perspective. New Jersey courts are particularly active in holding that our State Constitution offers more protection than the federal constitution. (See State v. Nyhammer, 396 NJ Super 72, for a typically bizarre reading of the Fifth Amendment.*)
In this case, an appellate court had previously held that the New Jersey state constitution grants a broad-based right to "informational privacy." Some state constitutions explicitly grant a right to privacy; NJ doesn't, but the Court reads our constitution as having one anyway. And then the appellate court expanded this judicially-granted right to include "informational privacy." The NJ Supreme Court rejected this expansion, although they said that they might change their minds if technology progresses to the point where IP addresses are more freely available.
All in all, I'm happy they ditched the Appellate Division's interpretation. I liked the idea of informational privacy, but I didn't like it coming through the courts.
*In that case, police officers read Nyhammer his Miranda rights. Nyhammer waived his rights, signed the Miranda card, and confessed to molesting an 11-year old girl. The appellate court held that Nyhammer's fifth amendment rights were violated; although he waived his rights, he didn't know at the time that he was a suspect. Therefore, his waiver wasn't really knowing and voluntary, and the court overturned his conviction. Talk about an expansive reading of a right against self-incrimination.
For all we know the moon may be as conscious as a poet or a realtor, and extremely weary of its monotonous round. - HLM
As a card carrying member of the ACLU, I regret this sort of case, but it is never the less the proper outcome. For all the people who hate the ACLU because the defend the "guilty" because of a technicality of law, remember this sort of case.
Sometimes the question of an individual's guilt is secondary to the precedent which would be formed. It is absolutely the space between the rock and the hard place. Do you let a criminal go free or do you let an abuse of power go unchecked?
More often than not, it is a "guilty" person who is on the receiving end of injustice such as invasion of privacy or violation of the 4th amendment. It is unfortunate that we don't have more clearly innocent people to protect. Generally speaking, police believe the "criminal" to be guilty. More often than not, they are, but this does not excuse a violation of constitutional rights to get a conviction.
Our rights are in place to prevent the innocent from being falsely convicted by creating a system of checks and balances that is supposed to prevent abuse by police, prosecutors, etc. Inherent in the system is the acknowledgment that people are corrupt and corruptible but the hope that not all people are in the same pockets.
My favorite example is O.J. Simpson. I am as confident that he killed his wife as I am that police planted evidence to get a conviction.
This is great until the Feds come in and unconstitutionally trump that like they do whenever they wis to step all over state law.
Yeah, they're all in it together for the money.
Or maybe money (or lack thereof) is the reason they can't be bothered investigating every singe one of the 14,000 warrants. Maybe even only about 5 (or 10 or 15) were actually bad warrants, and the rest were perfectly legal and perfectly justifiable.
So, we have two possibilities: a) the government is cohesive, efficient, greedy, corrupt, ruthless, or b) the government is slow, inefficient, under-funded (at least, if you want every warrant triple checked by every layer of authority), and lazy.
I'm betting on b), based on previous encounters with governments and their employees. The separation of powers would also explain the inefficiency, which would in turn explain the low warrant rejection rate. Or I could be wrong, and it could be a) the evil plutocrats wanting quick arrests for some god-knows reason.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
As a historical note, that's the way the Founders meant things to work.
The Federalist Papers tried to reassure people that the proposed new Federal government couldn't succeed as a tyranny because the states would defend the rights of state citizens.
This has been largely forgotten since the national government had to step in and override state-level oppression of African-Americans.
Would any lawyers care to opine about whether United States vs. Miller applies here?
In that case (425 U.S. 435, 442 (1976)) the Supreme Court ruled that phone records weren't private because they were information the customer voluntarily disclosed to the phone company that the phone company employees had routine access to.
Don't flame me, I didn't say it was _right_.
The court decided that the ISP CAN, or perhaps I mean must, give out the information without a warrant. All that is needed is a subpoena.
Orin Kerr discusses and links to the case at volokh.com, which isn't coming up for me right now.
Also, most of the commenters seem to have missed that this is a case about the new jersey constitution, not about the 4th amendment.
Above post is informative and insightful.
Law enforcement may be able to, but there is this little problem. Who do they get a subpoena for and how much proof do they need ahead of time? We are in the process of disassociating the idea that an IP address can be tied to an account holder. This pretty much means that an IP address is meaningless. You aren't going to get a subpoena for "John Doe a.k.a. 192.168.1.1". And it is highly unlikely that a grand jury is going to pass on a subpoena because someone is suspected have having used a given IP address.
Rulings like this also pretty much mean that any social or technical mischief caused on the Internet is absolutely protected. Sure, you know that 24.1.1.47 logged into your server, deleted files and turned on an FTP server for hosting porn videos. But, unless the person behind this admits to it in a chat room your ability to get them to stop is zero. Will law enforcement help? No, there isn't enough monetary damage. When you get tired of cleaning up after someone the fourth or fifth time you will discover there is nothing that you can do. Someone found an appealing target and they can hammer you into submission. About your best hope is to offer to pay them to stop - but what if they aren't interested in the money and just want to have fun?
Today, there are some ISPs that will take action against a customer that is committing mayhem on the Internet. But that number is getting smaller and smaller all the time.
"better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"
Our liberties and freedoms were secured by the blood of our forefathers for a reason. There is no reason "important enough" to forsake those liberties and freedoms.
-ted
How would this judgement affect the Deep Packet Inspection methods used by Contextual based advertising activity by the likes of Phorm and Nebuad?
Your data is being sold to a third party.
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