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Fourth Amendment Protects Hosted E-mail
Okian Warrior writes "As reported on the EFF website, today the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the contents of the messages in an email inbox hosted on a provider's servers are protected by the Fourth Amendment, even though the messages are accessible to an email provider. As the court puts it, 'The government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber's emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause.'"
Our email is safe!...kind of...
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Notice they said an Internet Service Provider's servers, not a small business, or a large enterprise, or a non-profit, or government of any kind. How many people do you know that still use the Email service that comes with their ISP?
pig just flew overhead.
Right in your own home.
I am so glad the EFF is helping stay on top of these thing. There if far too much to stay apprised of without someone looking out for our rights. Simply creating awareness is a huge mission.
William...
They can't legally compel them, but they can "request convincingly", I imagine. Does this mean that if the police ask my ISP for my email and my ISP hands the records over without a warrant, any evidence gotten that way is inadmissible? Does it mean I can sue my ISP?
In a physical search, anyone living in a house can consent to a search of the property. Can Comcast voluntarily consent to a search of their customers' email?
Unfortunately, there's also nothing to compel an ISP not to hand it over anyway, just to play nice with law enforcement. If you really want privacy, you have to use proper encryption. Once you've sent it to someone else, you never know where it will end up. Anyone with access to it can CHOOSE to share it with anyone they want. It's a dark dismal world we live in.
wait for it....wait for it....
Wow, a sensible ruling on internet privacy. Why do I have a sneaking feeling that this judge has stock in the company that's going to be supplying all the rubber stamps these warrants will receive?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The ruling might not be the same if the email is intercepted from some other source.
Just because it is illegal means nothing.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
Let's say you use a Gmail address as your primary email instead of whatever's provided by the people who provide your internet connection. Do they count as an "internet service provider" here, or is this decision as narrow as it sounds?
Software piracy is victimless theft.
Bitter, party of one.
Yet another data point proving that the EFF is one of the best nonprofit organizations in the US for a geek to bestow a gift upon.
If you're the kind of donor who's inclined to reward success rather than fund battles, now's a great time...
Oh, wait... See sig.
I can see the fnords!
Changed your slashdot login, did you, Sheldon?
Can I submit a formal request that demands my email provider not release any of my emails without being forced by warrant. If I can't stop voluntary compliance, then this is not very helpful anyway. In other words, we need the supreme court to rule that it is illegal for the host to disclose my emails without a warrant or this doesn't help in any meaningful way.
Or trying to be funny.
Hard to tell without being able to hear a voice or see a face. Have you considered that you're the one who has to parse it for emotion and that it might just be you who's bitter?
Nah, he's probably just a sourpuss.
Er, maybe I'm just cynical, but it (unfortunately) seems like both parties are willing to throw civil liberties under the bus when they think it's important; they differ mainly with regard to what they think is important. Call it a cynical hunch, but I suspect that if Obama were to appoint Janet Reno (Bill Clinton's attorney general) to the Supreme Court, she wouldn't be terribly eager to rein in the might of the federal government or limit the scope of its authority, and she's quite far to the left.
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Thats the very old trick that is used. A massive passive database of who is connected to who.
One person gets a real court sneak and peek letter, anyone one connected gets their email lists sorted
- who they are connecting to and so on. So if they dont read they can collect all connecting details they want.
A bit like the NYPD collecting IMEI numbers via an offer to remove a cell phone battery to prevent leakage.
NYPD tracking cell phone owners.
Its the number/ip/logs/connections thats interesting long term, the contents can wait.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Until another judge, or five come along and say it doesn't.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
geekoid? no that would be CrushingWesley or something like that. Howard would be PMS (perpetual motion squad, aaiight). Rajesh is the slumdogmillionaireTrueStory. And Leonard 'BadFish' Hofstadter would be Leakey. my guess :)
So I can't do what I am asking in D2?
Until I tried playing around with the settings it used to load all comments fully expanded by default in D2, but now I can't set it back. All I can set is to load "More" Comments, not all.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Of course I use PGP/GPG if I send sensitive data, but you are wrong. It is not the point that Google can read it (of course they can, they own it.) The government needs a search warrant to access Google's e-mail, not mine, unless Google chooses to give them access. Note that I am not saying I think Google would just hand the information over, but there is another important implication: A warrant for my emails to and from a Google account will not be enforceable, since they are not my e-mails, they are Google's. Note that in this context, this is a GoodThing(tm).
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I rent web space from ipower.com, and route all my email through it.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Where can I find a government that respects the bill of rights ?
Could be the far left of the American political spectrum. Here's the political compass map for all the US states based on Senators which should give you a fairly good idea about the range we're looking at. Everything falls right of center and above the mid-line for authoritarian/libertarian.
The candidates that tend to become President in the US tend to fall along that line. Too much deviation from it and doesn't work for whatever reason. America is for the most part a pretty centrist country. Might be why politicians accuse each other of being far-left or far-right. It makes them appear closer to the center, which is what the majority of the population seems to want.
Another funny story; The majority of European governments fall into that same band as well. I always hear Europeans posting comments about how they're actually a real indication of the political left, but even the most politically left-leaning countries in Europe are still to the right of the center line.
Would be interesting if the site ranked countries from other parts of the world as well and had a longer time-line. Maybe things really have changed since the 60's, but I somehow doubt it.
Take you tin foil hat off. There is no such agency.
Because Wikileak do not have his powers restricted by a Bill of Rights... It don't even have powers to begin with. In fact, Wikileak is not even a government. Oh wait, were you just trolling?
servers, not a small business, or a large enterprise, or a non-profit
Warrants are required for these to be searched.
How many people do you know that still use the Email service that comes with their ISP?
Almost everybody I know. Some use free services like Yahoo!, I do myself, but they also use the email provided by their ISP.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
In what way has Wikileaks accessed someone's email without their consent?
4096R/EF7BAFA6 79E1 DF98 D09D 898F 9A11 F6F0 DDDC 23FA EF7B AFA6
I run a mail server from my home. My ISP, Qwest, explicitly allows you to run servers from a home account:
Service may be used to host a server, personal or commercial, as long as server is used pursuant to the terms and conditions of this Agreement applicable to Service and not for any malicious purposes.
Furthermore, while they may filter port 25, they will open it at your request. Finally, you are right that you need to have reverse DNS configured correctly to avoid being filtered. Qwest will do this for anyone who pays for a static IP, which you need anyway if you are running a home server, and only costs $5 a month. It took me 5 minutes on the phone to get all this setup with them (after spending half a day learning that it was needed).
Finally as far a reliability goes, the various Dynamic DNS services also offer inexpensive SMTP store and forward, so you can list them as a backup mailhost in case your home service is down. I use changeip, but have also heard good things about DynDNS.
Running your own servers from home is a good learning experience and does improve your privacy. I hate to see DIY jobs discouraged on slashdot of all places.
Indeed. It's an "old trick" that has been upheld by the Supreme Court. The aggregation of the start and end points of a conversation, but not the content of a conversation, constitutes what is known as a "pen register". Such collection was judged to be legal without a warrant or court oversight in Smith v. Maryland 442 U.S. 735 (1979). Courts have subsequently found that pen register statutes apply similarly to IP addresses, logs of web sites visited, and the "envelope" of an email message — its To: and From: addresses, dates, and related information.
There's more to this story...the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 — passed by a supermajority of both houses of Congress — allows for the signals intelligence collection without a warrant via equipment and capabilities within the United States, provided the target is not a US Person. This requires determining which traffic content can be lawfully collected without a warrant, sometimes with the assistance of telecom operators in the US. In order to determine which traffic can be lawfully collected without a warrant, basic information about the traffic, such as its source and destination, must also be examined. Such examination of metadata — a "pen register" — does not require a warrant. If you don't like what you're hearing, don't complain to me: the Supreme Court decided this over three decades ago, and the decision has held with modern technologies as well.
The hallmark of the FISA amendments are judiciously protecting US Persons, while removing restrictions on where and how foreign intelligence on non-US Persons can be collected simply because it's traveling through a glass pipe in San Francisco instead of over the air on the streets of Yemen — and that includes warrantless monitoring of identified foreign intelligence targets, and the technical mechanisms via which their communications can be located, targeted, and extracted from data streams within the US. The cornerstone of the current law and the FISC decision is the protection of the privacy and rights of United States Persons. The current law is even more stringent with respect to US Persons than previous law: an individualized warrant from FISC is required to target a US Person anywhere on the globe; before, US Persons did not enjoy the same explicit protections under the law outside of the US.
So there's a bit more going on here that's not directly related to this story.
True, but generating appropriate keys, choosing sane settings, managing keys appropriately, dealing with the Web of Trust, etc. can be quite challenging for many.
The concept of asymmetrical keys and how they work can be difficult for many to understand. It's not unheard of for users to generate a key using the intended recipient's name and email address, then try to use it to send them mail. See http://gaudior.net/alma/johnny.pdf for a usability study of an admittedly old Mac version of PGP.
I routinely use GPG, as to several of my technically-minded colleagues, but even they get frequently mixed up on some of the details.
....said my brain, and so I looked up the individual involved in the case.
To say the least, I got a stiffy...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
At one point, Enzyte customers seeking a refund were told they needed to obtain a notarized document indicating that they had experienced “no size increase.” The admittedly ingenious idea behind the policy was that nobody “would actually go and have anything notarized that said that they had a small penis.”
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
So, are you saying that only the government can violate a person's rights? Sure seems that the US Supreme Court deals with a lot more than just government cases.
Their current "leaks", you know, the ones causing all of the current controversy, are from cables and emails. Last I checked, the State Department did not give their consent to the release.
Wikileak did not violate any person's right. These documents was taken from the government, which is not a person. Governements has no right to privacy. In fact, they have a duty of transparency.
Governement's wrong doing must be know to the public. This is how democracy work. Leaks are important to journalists, good journalism are important to democracy. What Wikileak publish is important.
Wikileak did not violate any person's right. These documents was taken from the government, which is not a person. Governements has no right to privacy. In fact, they have a duty of transparency.
So reporting on the health issues of world leaders, who are persons, does not violate anyone's rights? Hardly.
Governement's wrong doing must be know to the public.
That is a value statement and not a statement of law or fact. I happen to agree with the statement, but it has no basis is anything.
This is how democracy work. Leaks are important to journalists, good journalism are important to democracy. What Wikileak publish is important.
This has nothing specific to democracy, nor is the United States government a democracy (it is a republic). If it were a democracy, then we wouldn't need a congress as the people would vote on everything. Instead, they locally elect people to represent them in the republic.
Regardless, while leaks may be important to journalists, they are not a required for good journalism to occur. They are only useful for investigative journalism, which very often, these days, has a political agenda associated with it and therefore is more appropriately investigative editorialism.
As many of Wikileaks releases deal with countries that are ruled by dictators, it seems that the leaks are more conducive to making their governments more transparent, versus democratic/republic ones.
Yes, the government is not a person in the human sense, neither is a corporation, but in the legal sense, they are a person. And legal entities have protections under the constitution, too.
While it would be naive to assume that journalist could report on everything that needed to be reported on through overt means (versus covert means and leaks). Putting journalistic freedom at a higher power than the people, then just makes the journalists the tyrant versus the king or the government.
There must be a proper balance. I am not saying that Wikileaks crossed that boundary, although I suspect they have in some of their reporting (again, people's personal health histories come to mind).
People, both human and corporate/government have certain rights and expectations of privacy. People also have the right to know what their government is doing (again, a value judgment, but a pretty commonly accepted principle).
So, the question really is about whether the people's right to know outweighs the individual's right to privacy. It is a difficult question and a slippery slope. Particularly when it comes to who is the final arbitrator when there is a conflict.
For instance, would people be so worked up and fighting for the freedom to release the current set of Wikileak documents if instead of Wikileaks, it was Fox News that had obtained the information and was now in trouble. I doubt it.
Anyway, in summary, a free press is good for all types of governments, not just democracies. But, the free press needs to be balanced against the individuals own rights. If there are no checks and balances, if the press is not held accountable, then they just become the new tyrant instead of the government.
Today is a good day for privacy everywhere!
I have good news for you. I don't see anywhere AT&T's Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy where they forbid running a server from your home. While they aren't as explicit as Qwest in stating that you have the right to run servers they come pretty close:
The dynamic IP address is a single Internet address intended for use with a single Member Account and any associated Sub Accounts. The static IP address or multiple static IP address is intended for use with a single computer or a network of computer/servers. You may not use the Service in a manner that is inconsistent with these intended uses.
Furthermore, AT&T will configure reverse DNS for your residential home service (with a static IP), although they may require you to transfer your forward DNS to them to avoid confusion with a split record. They wouldn't do this if they forbid running servers.
I live in New Mexico, and I know what you mean about not having many options. The town where I grew up didn't have broadband until around 2002, and I think Comcast is still the only option. The town where I went to college, the only options were dial up or a wireless WAN where you pointed a directional dish toward the tower and lost connection when the wind picked up :) Most places here have both cable and DSL now though. Comcast and Time Warner are both pretty hostile to home servers, insisting you upgrade to their business package, but most DSL providers will work with you.
I'm sure they didn't, but Wikileaks did not access those, it is publishing them. These are very different issues.
It is also the case that the government is not protected under the bill of rights, but its citizens are. This (important) point doesn't even apply here, however, because there was no accessing on Wikileak's part.
4096R/EF7BAFA6 79E1 DF98 D09D 898F 9A11 F6F0 DDDC 23FA EF7B AFA6
So, are you saying that it is alright to publish information that is obtained by violating people's rights? Would it be okay for the media to report on the names of, say rape victims? If we can agree for a moment that rape victims are entitled to their privacy and it is alright not to disclose their identity, then why is it alright to disclose information regarding the physical and mental health of the leaders of other countries? Obviously, people were quite upset when the rape charges were disclosed against the founder of Wikileaks. And yet, he was a person of interest by the authorities before the latest leaks.
Why is it okay to disclose the government interactions of some people and not others? I ask this seriously. Dont' all people have basic human rights? Until the moral/ethical dilemma is resolved, groups like Wikileaks will always be in hot water and called on the carpet for it.
As for the government not being protected, that is true, but it's employees are. The cables and emails were created by human beings, some of which (not all) were in the employ of the government. However, do we really want to take the approach that how those individual people communicate with each other should be carefully worded and screened, because their private emails and cables may one day be released? These were not official communiques of the government which would be public. Many of these documents are people's personal email and observations. A fast portion of it is not even work related. Do not government workers still have protections under the bill of rights? What about the people mentioned in these emails and cables? While it may be interesting to know that the health of a world leader is failing, isn't that individual human being afforded the basic right of having his or her health issues be private. And if not, then why are yours or mine considered private and not theirs?
As for Wikileak not accessing the information directly and therefore not applying to them. That sounds like a defense the government would use. "Yes, sir, we have your private information, but that is okay, because technically, we weren't the ones who took it, we simply came into possession of it and published it for the world to see." Wikileaks depends on and encourages people to give them the information they publish. As such, they cannot claim innocence as if this just somehow fell on their doorstep accidentally.
I am not saying that they should or should not do what they do. I am only saying that if it is a violation of somebody else's rights and they are encouraging people to do it, then they themselves are violating people's rights.
The whole Wikileaks thing has opened up a can of worms with the availability of information available on the internet -- whether obtain legally or not. One danger of the way Wikileaks operates is that by indiscriminately releasing information obtained from government sources, that these same governments will crack down and increase security so that when there really is something germain and important that needs to be reported, it will no longer be possible to get that information.
It is impressive that Wikileaks was able to obtain all those documents. Unfortunately, in winning the battle of proving they could publish it all, they may have lost the war for the rest of us by making real information that much harder to get. (Which I know has nothing to do with the actual topic of violation of rights, but those are my concerns).
Wikileaks is not a US operation. Also, Assange is not a US citizen. USG has zero authority over them. Why do you think he's being chased internationally by those ridiculous "the condom broke" swedish warrants? That's the USG pressuring other governments to "do something." If the USG had actual authority over either the leak operation or Assange, he'd have been in Guantanamo already. Best they could do was dig into the guy's sex life and try to shitcan his reputation.
Since the charges were actually filed against him by the swedes, prior to the release of the US documents, I can't buy that the US was behind it. His own publicity and popularity is what brought his sex life to the the public eye, much like any celebrity now a days. But, unless you think the US government is clairvoyant and got the swedes to file the charges a couple of months before the leaks, I don't see how they are behind his current sex scandal legal problems.
Wikileak did not violate any person's right. These documents was taken from the government, which is not a person. Governements has no right to privacy. In fact, they have a duty of transparency.
So reporting on the health issues of world leaders, who are persons, does not violate anyone's rights? Hardly.
World leaders need to declare health issue that can affect politics, or step down. And yes, if the president die, from what ever, during his mandate it will have consequence. There would not be any vice-president if that was not the case. if that such a privacy issue, why there is files about this anyway. If individual rights was violated, it was the governement that guilty.
Governement's wrong doing must be know to the public.
That is a value statement and not a statement of law or fact. I happen to agree with the statement, but it has no basis is anything.
This is fact. The public must know everything. I focus on worng doing because this is what is usualy hidden from the public. Good deed are always get extensive publicity for re-election purpose.
This is how democracy work. Leaks are important to journalists, good journalism are important to democracy. What Wikileak publish is important.
This has nothing specific to democracy, nor is the United States government a democracy (it is a republic). [...]
Democracy and republic are not mutualy exclusive.
Regardless, while leaks may be important to journalists, they are not a required for good journalism to occur. [...]
Sure, journalists just have to report what they are told to, because journalism is so great in China.
There must be a proper balance. I am not saying that Wikileaks crossed that boundary, although I suspect they have in some of their reporting (again, people's personal health histories come to mind).
Why raising FUD then? If you got real criticism(eg: more then "i suspect") please say it or just let Wikileak do its job. If they ever cross the boundary you will know. When that happen, Julian Assange will get arrested for the actual Wikileak publication, not questioned about unrelated claims in hope to discredit him. (And, leaders health issue is non-issue, see above)
I'm proud to live in a country that takes due process very seriously
Really? I don't know about Britain but you can't mean the US. I already mentioned a US admin support for the Indonesian invasion of a sovereign nation, East Timor, in which 200,000 were massacred. CIA supported General Pinochet's overthrow of the democratically elected government of Chile, as well as his repressive rule. How about Reagan's support of The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations. Operation Northwoods was a proposal for the CIA to commit acts of terror against US citizens in the US and blame Cuba for them. COINTELPRO was a group of actions taken by the FBI against political groups to discredit and disrupt them. The CIA's Family Jewels: "Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years, Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents". Cubana Flight 455 was a Cuban airliner brought down by terrorists, Cubans who the CIA paid as agents. The Libertarian, Individual Liberties, and Free Markets Institute CATO has the report Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record it answers in the affirmative.
And let's not forget what the US has done to American Indians. Even though the Cherokee had treaty rights in the Carolinas and Georgia, President Andrew Jackson ordered the military he commanded to force the Cherokee to march on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma after gold was found. The US broke one treaty after another signed with the Sioux, forcing them unto smaller and smaller reservations. There was the Forced sterilization of Native American Indian women through the 1970's.
If I dig some more I can find a lot more I bet. So don't go saying the US "runs a pretty tight ship".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This is fact. The public must know everything. I focus on worng doing because this is what is usualy hidden from the public. Good deed are always get extensive publicity for re-election purpose.
It is not fact at all (that the public must know of everything). It only applies in our western culture. Even the ancient Greeks and Romans, of which much of our culture is based on did not subscribe to that notion. Even in the US, that is not totally true, which is why some congressional meetings and even state and local government meetings are permitted to be behind closed doors and has been upheld by the Supreme Court.
I agree whole heartedly that the government needs to be transparent. However, individuals do not have a right to know everything going on. There are cases where the common good or security preclude the desire to have access to everything. I will also concede that the government, at least the US government, tries to hide behind withholding information because of national security. Since the information is withheld, makes it hard to tell they are being truthful about it. But that does not change the real fact that some information needs to be withheld and therefore, we as individuals do not have a right to total access of government documents.
Case in point, not health related, and also not national security. A child is put up for adoption and the mother asks to have the records sealed, which are then sealed. 20 years later the child wants to find his/her birth mother and wants access to those records. Is it granted? Currently, it depends on what state you are in, but it is a possibility. Now, take it one step further, Wikileaks or some other group gets a hold of adoption records and wants to publish them, they are, after all government documents. Should they be allowed to?
Another case, John Doe is a criminal but testifies and enters the witness protection program. He builds a comfortable and successful life. Should Wikileaks be able to publish his file, if they came into possession of it, because, again, it is a government record?
If the answer to either of those above scenarios is "No," then you have to admit that the public does not have the right to every piece of information the government has. I know that those are two specific cases, but as soon as you start having to add exceptions to the rule ("The public has the right to everything except for..."), then you don't have a rule at all.
Why raising FUD then? If you got real criticism(eg: more then "i suspect") please say it or just let Wikileak do its job. If they ever cross the boundary you will know. When that happen, Julian Assange will get arrested for the actual Wikileak publication, not questioned about unrelated claims in hope to discredit him. (And, leaders health issue is non-issue, see above)
I don't think I am raising FUD. However, with regards to Mr. Assange, unless he is the one directly breaking the law, I don't see him being prosecuted for anything. When the Pentegon Papers broke, the publisher of the paper didn't go to jail. Mr. Assange is the publisher, it wouldn't be him going to jail, but one of the underlings.
With regard to his current legal problems, they were there before his recent leaks against the US government. The only thing that has changed is that the leak made him famous in a much broader circle than before (really, prior to the most recent leak, most people didn't even know what Wikileaks was, let alone who he is). So, now, that he is famous, his private life is coming under public scrutiny just like anyone else's who is famous.
If being in the spotlight is uncomfortable for him, then he should be reminded that he is only feeling the public scrutiny that he brings to all of those people he reports on. Just as an elected official chooses to run for office and basically give up any real sense of privacy, so to has Mr. Assange, given the nature of the business he has chosen to be in. Same for Dan Rather, Rush Limbaugh or any other public person.