New York Judge OKs Warrant To Search Entire Gmail Account

jfruh writes While several U.S. judges have refused overly broad warrants that sought to grant police access to a suspect's complete Gmail account, a federal judge in New York State OK'd such an order this week. Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein argued that a search of this type was no more invasive than the long-established practice of granting a warrant to copy and search the entire contents of a hard drive, and that alternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, risked excluding information that trained investigators could locate.

Comments

Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[sjbe]

lternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, risked excluding information that trained investigators could locate.

Ummm, isn't that PRECISELY the point? If the search criteria isn't sufficiently broad to catch someone then that means they don't have enough evidence to be conducting the search in the first place. Almost everyone can be found guilty of some illegal activity (however minor) if the search parameters are sufficiently broad.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sarten-X]

Ummm, isn't that PRECISELY the point?

No. The point of the fourth amendment is to prevent investigators from harassing people looking for reasons to prosecute and persecute.

What seems to be happening here is that there is already evidence enough to justify a search, but the details are not specific enough to be able to ask someone else to execute it. As a physical analogue, there's enough evidence to search a house for a murder weapon, but the investigators don't know it's taped to the bottom of the third dresser drawer. In the case of email, I'd expect the investigators don't know all aliases that might have been used, or in what timeframe the relevant emails might have been sent.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost everyone can be found guilty of some illegal activity (however minor) if the search parameters are sufficiently broad.

Which is the whole point in total surveillance.

Everyone's already been guilty of something for some while, but now we also already have all the evidence.

The law may be applied coincidentally whenever the wrong people are annoyed. Government protestors really have no chance unless they're the particularly rare genius with a lot of power (as e.g. Snowden) who in one fell swoop unleashes enough on the world to put them immediately in the public eye.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Richard_at_work]

How does this differ from a typical search warrant for a premises? While you can get a search warrant to search "room X at property Y", more often than not the search warrant is for "property Y", which is exactly the same as a gmail account in entirety.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Brulath]

The New York court, in contrast, granted on June 11 a warrant that permitted law enforcement to obtain emails and other information from a Gmail account, including the address book and draft mails, and to permit a search of the emails for certain specific categories of evidence.

They only have permission to search for certain specific categories of evidence, despite having the entire archive, so they wouldn't be able to find them guilty of some minor illegal activity unless it was part of the specific categories the judge authorised.

Have you ever tried to find something in your email account that you know is there but couldn't locate it using any search terms that came to mind, only to find it later along with something completely unrelated? How hard do you think it would be to describe to a Google employee the type of information you want them to search for in (likely) thousands of emails and get a perfect success rate (assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that that's the only satisfactory outcome)?

Responding to the opinion by the District of Columbia court that gave the government the option of getting the email host to search the emails, Judge Gorenstein wrote that Google employees would not be able to arrive at the significance of particular emails without having been trained in the substance of the investigation.

"While an agent steeped in the investigation could recognize the significance of particular language in emails, an employee of the email host would be incapable of doing so," he wrote.

It seems to be the same thing, to me. So we have limitations to the type of evidence that may be acquired, and the ability to find that evidence using people with intimate knowledge of the case (as opposed to a corporation's employee).

I don't get the fuss, it's not like you have some right to hide suspected (they got a warrant) illegal activities just because they're recorded in an email archive stored somewhere other than your computer's hard drive. The only problem I have with it could be described as a slippery slope fallacy; that is, maybe the rules will become more relaxed over time as more judges build on this case. But that's somewhat pointless speculation at this point; this judge seems to be quite sane.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[wisnoskij]

I imagine searching an entire hard-drive would be broad enough to catch most /. users.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand not knowing aliases, but timeframe?

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Threni]

> They only have permission to search for certain specific categories of
> evidence, despite having the entire archive, so they wouldn't be able to find
> them guilty of some minor illegal activity unless it was part of the specific
> categories the judge authorised.

Or unless the details of the minor illegal activity (or major illegal activity but unrelated to the investigation, come to that) are acted upon within a seperate investigation.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

No No! You don't get it! If the patent system has taught us anything, this is like searching someone's entire house, but on a computer. And everyone knows, that's completely different.

Anon for mod points.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sockatume]

A better analogy would be "we have enough evidence to justify a search, but we don't know whether the murder weapon is a gun, a knife, a potato, or a window, so we're going to be keeping an exact record of every single object in the house".

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[LordLimecat]

I dunno, the judge is right that warrants are granted for things like "Contents of X", including when X is a hard drive. Why is this materially different? Gmail holds ~7GB of email, I know people with PST files over 7GB.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Except warrants for physical items have to list specific places to search and specific items to be searched for. They can't get a warrant to search everywhere and for anything they want. So he is right and you are wrong.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

$100 says they find kiddie porn.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sarten-X]

Could be. If several witnesses see an assailant bludgeon someone on the sidewalk with an obscured object, then run into a house, the police may not be able to ascertain exactly what the weapon is, but they'd certainly have enough evidence for a search, and they could keep a record of any potential weapons seen in the house in case forensics can later get them a better description of the weapon used. As in this case, they'd have to get as narrow a warrant as possible, specifying that they're searching for the weapon and not, say, evidence of tax fraud. Of course, if they found readily-visible evidence of such fraud during the course of the authorized search, they are not required to ignore it.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine: witness says suspect used gmail account foo@example.com to receive requests as a hit man.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[bickerdyke]

Used to have that too. Strange thing was, the PST file only held a few hundered Emails.

At one point Outlook wil probably block the PC for a few hours and do a 6,9GB garbage collection.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sarten-X]

Specific place to search: the email account (or the house, in my example). Specific items to be searched for: evidence of money laundering (or a murder weapon).

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sarten-X]

The investigation is for money laundering. It's not hard to imagine setting up a laundering channel months or years in advance, by conspiring with someone to accept a transfer of money and forward it on to some other conspirator.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[David_Hart]

I imagine searching an entire hard-drive would be broad enough to catch most /. users.

I am not a lawyer but as far as I know, search warrants are tied to a specific crime. Any evidence of any other crime is inadmissible in court. Of course, if investigators stumbled on evidence of something like terrorism your still likely to end up in Gitmo.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[DarkOx]

How hard do you think it would be to describe to a Google employee the type of information you want them to search for in (likely) thousands of emails and get a perfect success rate (assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that that's the only satisfactory outcome)?

Not all that hard really. I agree with you in that you probably can't go specifying search terms because all it would take is a few code words having been used and you really might miss what you are looking for. That said a lot of people now have a decade of correspondence in Gmail. I think "the entire mailbox of" is a little to broad for a warrant. Its not fair to just open up all of someones papers for their entire life for investigation.

I would expect in almost every situation there would be *some* criteria short of *all messages* that could be used. Like say all message between "X date and Z dates", when the crime took place on Y date. Bracket it by a year or so, or maybe longer if it was some sort of conspiracy or something at that point the prosecutors have to have some definable reasons and a magistrate has to agree the make sense. Maybe its all messages with an 822 from ${address}; or even mail server IP in ${geographic region}.

Prosecutors should have to demonstrate some knowledge of what they are looking for, just like with a physical search where they have to say: we are looking for a knife between 3" and 7" long, or financial documents related to account XXXX--XXXX-XXX.

 

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[blackraven14250]

Ummm, isn't that PRECISELY the point? If the search criteria isn't sufficiently broad to catch someone then that means they don't have enough evidence to be conducting the search in the first place. Almost everyone can be found guilty of some illegal activity (however minor) if the search parameters are sufficiently broad.

Genuine question. If I employed the services of a company specializing in archiving paperwork, and the government had a search warrant for potential evidence in their case which could be contained in that paperwork, wouldn't the prosecutor (or at least someone working under the prosecutor's direction) be the one looking through it? As the argument goes so many times against the government's practices, why should we expect that, in the case of email, searches should operate substantially differently than with paper records? In this case, it seems wholly appropriate to apply it in the other direction.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

"Search property Y, for these and these specific items/pieces of information/data, pertaining precisely to these and these specific supported suspisions of breaking an important law, considering these possible elements of proof are important to the case, and sufficient proof cannot be obtained otherwise". Everything else should be completely ignored by the people doing the search, which should be excluded from any other proceeding, so as not to influence the case. Anything else is abusive and oppressive, and we all now it is regularly used as harassment and "punishment" of honest citizens all around the world, opposing to corruption, tyranny, and erroneous and oppressive laws.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Dishevel]

But they are not asking for evidence of anything. They are asking for everything. This type of search allows "Search First, the find something to bust you on." That is bad.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sockatume]

True, but at least in that case you'd expect them to limit their search to plausible bludgeons. It's a tantalising grey area, I think we both agree.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG people, what part of this do you not get? The system is broken. Anything that the government is unable to get legally, they will get illegally. Who cares if parameters are "broad"? This is like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Just declare that you have no moral obligation to put up with their BS, and start living your life like an outlaw.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[NotQuiteReal]

What "interesting" lives you imagine most /. users to lead.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Jane Q. Public]

Could be. If several witnesses see an assailant bludgeon someone on the sidewalk with an obscured object, then run into a house, the police may not be able to ascertain exactly what the weapon is, but they'd certainly have enough evidence for a search, and they could keep a record of any potential weapons seen in the house in case forensics can later get them a better description of the weapon used.

I don't think the question is really whether the judge can order such a thing. I think it's more of a question of whether it is justified in this case.

GP made a very good point. Search warrants are required to be particular, and to specify the particular thing(s) being searched for. If they don't know what they're looking for, broadening the search to turn it into a "fishing expedition" is not allowable.

The general principle is that the search should be as narrowly focused on particular evidence as can practically be managed. Is that the case here? It doesn't seem to be, but I'm not the judge, I don't know the details.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Falos]

Doesn't need to be interesting. The average ("Three felonies per day") isn't interesting if only by definition. If anything, someone who absolutely couldn't be implicated would be the interesting outlier.

But I'm guessing you had "real" concerns in mind. "Maybe one day law enforcement will scale back and only hunt those," he failed to say with a straight face.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Bite The Pillow]

I'm not being pedantic here. Searching a house and an email account are not the same, and trying to make an analogy will generate questions based on what people know about the house scenario.

Consider a file cabinet of all correspondence, and the judge allowing a copy of every paper retained for evidence. You can't take everything just in case. But is this different because its a copy instead of taking the original?

Hint, there is a big difference between search and seize. It should be clear now.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

A better analogy would be "we have enough evidence to justify a search, but we don't know whether the murder weapon is a gun, a knife, a potato, or a window, so we're going to be keeping an exact record of every single object in the house".

And unlike mail that's hosted locally or grabbed via POP3, it's gmail. (Other webmail providers probably do the same thing these days), where everything that's been deleted isn't really gone, the UI just doesn't show it anymore. So it's more like "an exact record of every single object that has ever been in the house," even if it's something the homeowner threw out years before the alleged offence.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not specific. Also, any warrant asking to just search the entire house should be rejected, too.

It always seems like you're on the side of the government, whether it's the NSA or what have you.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Triklyn]

... searching the entire house for a murder weapon seems eminently reasonable. or drugs. it seems like "the entire house" is pretty much the most reasonable scope of all these types of searches. where you're fairly sure the item was in the suspects possession, but you need to find it either at his or her work or home/vehicle.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

We can argue all day long about what is right but, the bottom line is the government can do anything they please, including confiscate your property just because they needed that industrial grinder or air ratchet for themselves. I know, I've had it happen to me.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[nabsltd]

The general principle is that the search should be as narrowly focused on particular evidence as can practically be managed. Is that the case here? It doesn't seem to be, but I'm not the judge, I don't know the details.

I suspect the issue might be that a list of keywords (and synonyms) that would be reasonable in a money laundering case might be so large as to make a global retrieval seem reasonable. And, paring back the list of words might miss something important.

I see no harm whatsoever allowing a search through all the GMail of that one person for evidence concerning money laundering, with evidence of any unrelated crimes (e.g., admission to a murder of a spouse because they were sleeping with someone else) not being admissible.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sarten-X]

It always seems like you're on the side of the government, whether it's the NSA or what have you.

Often, yes. You see, I actually understand the design of the US government. It's built to continually revise and improve, and it's been doing so for over 200 years. On the other hand, your opinions have been forming for less than a century, and since you're only a single person, you've undergone far fewer revision cycles, all of which have been from a very limited perspective.

For example:

Also, any warrant asking to just search the entire house should be rejected, too.

Is that just, though? It may appeal to your sense of privacy, but would it appeal to your sense of justice to know that any criminal could effectively conceal evidence by simply putting it in a large enough box? How would your neighbors feel about it, knowing that you could be seen kidnapping their children, and the police could do nothing because they wouldn't know what room they're being held in?

Sure, the examples are hypothetical, but the underlying issue of deciding what is right predates your consideration by quite a long while. The best we have so far is a system where certain activities are absolutely permitted, and certain activities are absolutely forbidden, and deciding which category a given situation fits into falls to a judge whose primary interest is to bring the legal precedent closer to a state that everyone considers to be fair. It's not perfect, and likely will never be perfect, but it's closer than having Random Internet Guy simply decide that privacy trumps justice, because he says so.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[nabsltd]

Also, any warrant asking to just search the entire house should be rejected, too.

I'm no police apologist, but what you're saying is downright silly.

If the police have enough evidence that shows you own a firearm of the same caliber as the murder weapon, and some other evidence indicates you might be guilty (e.g., motive), then they shouldn't need to know what room in your house you keep your gun in order to get a search warrant.

In this case, if the police have enough other evidence that you have evidence of your money laundering in your GMail account, I don't see it unreasonable that they can search all the e-mail. It really isn't any different from getting a warrant to search the entire contents of a specific filing cabinet in your home, and it really is an unreasonable burden to require the police to also know the color of the paper the evidence is printed on, as well as which file folder contains the paper.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[nabsltd]

Its not fair to just open up all of someones papers for their entire life for investigation.

OK, how about this physical example where you have a filing cabinet which contains papers that have written on them evidence of a crime. The police execute a warrant to search through the filing cabinet for those papers, and take only those papers concerning the crime.

But, but must read every paper to determine if that particular paper has the evidence they are looking for. So, your "entire life" has been exposed. Nothing except what concerns the exact crime on the warrant can ever be used against you in a criminal trial, but they might have learned any number of other things about you that you wanted to keep secret.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

gmail can be accessed via pop3 (although any pop3 provider could store the mail somewhere else too, this is not unique to webmail or gmail)

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sowelu]

God, it's nice to see someone on here who doesn't think the government is a literal force of primal evil. Having even a little faith in the system seems to be thoughtcrime on internet boards.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, isn't that PRECISELY the point?

No. The point of the fourth amendment is to prevent investigators from harassing people looking for reasons to prosecute and persecute.

What seems to be happening here is that there is already evidence enough to justify a search, but the details are not specific enough to be able to ask someone else to execute it. As a physical analogue, there's enough evidence to search a house for a murder weapon, but the investigators don't know it's taped to the bottom of the third dresser drawer. In the case of email, I'd expect the investigators don't know all aliases that might have been used, or in what timeframe the relevant emails might have been sent.

Damn that's a horrible analogy. No, presumably if they are getting a warrant for a murder weapon, they probably have a body and a reason to suspect the person, and if they have the body they probably have a good idea what the weapon is (gun vs. knife say), so they get a warrant to search the house for any/all knives or similar weapons. Finding a gun wouldn't really be relevant if the murder was committed with a knife (or bladed object). If they fail to find it taped under the 3rd dresser drawer, well, that's their problem.

What they are saying here is asking the landlord (or the bank holding the mortgage) to go in and search for "any knife with a 3" or larger blade", they might not find it taped under the drawer because they aren't "trained investigators" and don't have trained police dogs to hunt things out with blood on them, etc - so they want everything so their investigators, trained for this, can search. Now, whether it's probable a geek Google employee can't find stuff the cops could, well, I dunno...

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm not a money launderer, but if I was, I think my laundering channel would be pretty well hidden.

Maybe if I didn't know how to set up such a channel, I wouldn't be gainfully employed in computer security and would have to turn to money laundering.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[lgw]

I don't think the question is really whether the judge can order such a thing. I think it's more of a question of whether it is justified in this case.

We lack the data to second-guess the judge's judgment. I'm elated by this story, personally. There was a judge; there was a warrant; that's amazing progress for email!

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Warhawke]

That's not completely correct. The Fourth Amendment was enacted specifically to prevent writs of assistance, which were commonly used in Britain to give law enforcement officers broad, nearly unlimited power to conduct searches for contraband or smuggled goods. The Fourth Amendment was enacted to prevent law enforcement officers from having this broad power to search anywhere and everywhere, even if there was reasonable evidence of a crime.

Part of the danger of broad writs or warrants is that (1) they unduly invade a person's fundamental right to privacy, and (2) the adoption of the plain view exception to the exclusionary rule will make you liable for anything the police uncover, whether it's related to the crime being searched for or not. So if the police go searching your hard drives for child pornography and uncover evidence that you bought some pot from a friend via e-mail, that evidence can and will be used against you.

You are correct in that a search may be so broad as to search for evidence of the thing to be seized. However, the presumption is and should always be tailored as narrowly as possible. Simply saying that the police do not know where the gun is does not give the police powers to search any property the suspect owns. The police may search his house and anywhere in it, but the boundaries must be narrowly tailored so as to survive constitutional scrutiny. In the case of e-mail, any communications with people not directly implicated or otherwise material to the crime should be excluded, as there is relative certainty that material information will not be communicated with these parties (for example, you aren't going to find evidence of child pornography in my weekly Mint financial statement updates or newsletters I receive). As such, it is likely that the scope of this warrant is over-broad.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[DarkOx]

yes but they would get a warrant to search the filing cabinet for the named documents. They *might* discover other interesting documents incidental to the search in the cabinet and they would be allowed access to those. They would not be allowed to remove or copy the other documents. They also would not be allowed to drive to your parents place 5 hours away and search thur boxes of old files there from 10 years ago, unless they specified doing so on the warrant and it would only be allowed if there was reason to think related documents could be there.

E-mailboxes are not perfectly analogous to physical filing containers. People tend to have all of there electronic documents in once place. I think the basic principle of limited searches though means if you can't restrict where, because there isn't an atomic concept of place, than you must restrict what. So I still say minimally having to name a reasonable date range is not asking to much of LEOs.
 

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[sjames]

That would be fine, but what they actually asked for was the email account. Item to search for: Every email ever sent or received.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[sjames]

You also need to describe what you are searching for. It needn't be an EXACT description, but should be as narrowly constrained as possible. For example, you might search for 'the object that bludgeoned john doe", a bloody baseball bat, a handgun, etc.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Uberbah]

It always seems like you're on the side of the government, whether it's the NSA or what have you.

Often, yes. You see, I actually understand the design of the US government. It's built to continually revise and improve, and it's been doing so for over 200 years.

Sounds like a statist. But having secret laws, secret courts, and vast portions of the government operate outside the consent of the governed isn't an improvement, it's anti-ethical to a democracy.

How would your neighbors feel about it, knowing that you could be seen kidnapping their children, and the police could do nothing because they wouldn't know what room they're being held in? Sure, the examples are hypothetical

Example isn't Scottish. Let's fix it: a nosy neighbor reports you to the police for luring the underaged to your house, and so the cops get a warrant and search it. You produce the receipt for your recently purchased Girl Scout cookies, footage from the CCTV camera installed at your front door, and the girl's mother verifies your story: Sally was there to give you your Thin Mints and never set foot inside your house.

But they had a warrant! So they remove all your photo albums and find the pictures of you sitting on a couch made out of bags filled with marijuana, and bring you up on drug charges. Case is dismissed after you prove the photos were taken in Amsterdam three years ago, but by then your house and possessions were sold under asset forfeiture laws.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[mysidia]

but they'd certainly have enough evidence for a search, and they could keep a record of any potential weapons seen in the house in case forensics can later get them a better description of the weapon used.

They wouldn't have probable cause to visit every apartment in the building and cease every blunt object in the house from every tenant and take it to the lab for analysis. And from the public there is a simple answer to this illegal search behavior.... Jury nullification. If this person comes before a jury charged with a crime, and I find out about this illegal search; I will almost certainly reach a finding of not guilty, regardless of the facts of the case.

Not a single citizen is required to tolerate an illegal unconstitutional search or assist in a law enforcement action tainted by such misbehavior of police and judges.

However, with a service such as Google there is a simple answer. Order them to preserve and not delete any e-mail for the user within the potential time frame

Then when they have enough evidence to specify the thing to be searched or the particular objects to be seized, without first conducting an illegal search, they will be able to get a legitimate warrant and inspect the preserved materials.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this differ from a typical search warrant for a premises?

Those describe what is being searched for. They don't cover the entire contents of the premises.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[perceptual.cyclotron]

As in this case, they'd have to get as narrow a warrant as possible, specifying that they're searching for the weapon and not, say, evidence of tax fraud. Of course, if they found readily-visible evidence of such fraud during the course of the authorized search, they are not required to ignore it.

This is the one spot where I trip up a little, and have to wonder if we need slightly different protocols. How does the plain-sight doctrine work for digital media? In effect, every single email is equally 'visible'. The analogy to a house in the real world breaks down utterly here, and it's not clear how to fix that. What happens if they find emails with evidence of tax-fraud? Were those emails in plain sight? I agree that the scope is entirely reasonable for the necessary search – but I have to wonder how they would handle evidence of something they had no justification to search for? Law enforcement's penchant for parallel reconstruction (aka perjury) suggests they are very likely to use this information. Perhaps if it were understood that any future evidence brought for a different crime, and for which the defendant could demonstrate there was evidence within the email trawl, were assumed to be poisoned fruit, then we might have some better assurances. But there are some pretty obvious flaws with that kind of approach too...

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[HiThere]

OTOH, this judge thought it quite reasonable to search an entier hard drive. And said it was established predecent. Yuck! That's NOT a narrow search.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[HiThere]

The problem is that one agent of it under reckless evil can undo the work of 100 agents working selflessly for good. And that's assuming the "good" agents don't collude to protect the bad apple.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[HiThere]

Sort of. But they should be required to narrowly specify the information that they are looking for, and have evidence that would lead a reasonable person to conclude it is probably there. And they shouldn't be allowed to record anything that doesn't match the items described in the warrant.

And I quote: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Cardinal Richelieu

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the lead pipe

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[david_thornley]

Except that the warrant will allow for searching your house for missing Girl Scouts. The police searching cannot legally look anywhere too small to hold a very small Girl Scout, nor can they open photo albums or take them away.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[david_thornley]

As far as I know, if the police come across evidence of another crime while legitimately executing the original warrant, they are allowed to act on it. I don't think there's any court tests of this happening in disk or email searches, but IANAL.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Sarten-X]

Let's fix it: a nosy neighbor reports you to the police for luring the underaged to your house, and so the cops get a warrant and search it.

A tip usually isn't enough for a search warrant. There's a spectrum of how much proof is required. A search requires less than an arrest, but there's still a significant threshold to pass.

So they remove all your photo albums and find the pictures of you sitting on a couch made out of bags filled with marijuana

...and that might be enough for a new search warrant to look for drug paraphernalia.

and bring you up on drug charges

...which would require an arrest warrant, with an even higher burden of proof, and a prosecutor that thinks they can make a case on more than just a few pictures of you not even taken in your house.

That's not very Scottish, either.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Cryacin]

Hi Judge, did you bring your hat, lure and sunscreen? Us lawyers for the prosecution are heading off on a little fishing expedition. Come along, it'll be fun!

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[kwbauer]

Well it was quite particular as it was limited to the contents of a particular account and not every account possibly used by the defendant.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[kwbauer]

How is searching an entire hard-drive for a particular thing (a file containing X) any different than searching an entire house for a .40 S&W handgun. Knowing the basics of file structures, would you have them specify which sectors on which tracks of which platters to search? Please, lets be a little bit realistic about things.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[kwbauer]

They aren't searching every apartment in the building. They are leafing through every book in the apartment of the defendant.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[kwbauer]

"be seen kidnapping their children..." maybe a couple of your neighbors telling the police that they saw YOU dragging the child into YOUR house is considered more than "a tip" by the majority of us possessing what we colloquially refer to as "common sense."

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[kwbauer]

They specified that they are looking for emails containing information related to the specified crime. If they notice other crimes in the emails, then the defendant's lawyers should (as in the the law and Constitution should be so interpreted) be able to have that evidence dismissed as having been illegally obtained. That seems to be a reasonable way to deal with this as they shouldn't be treated as being in plain sight but the police do need to perform the search.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[kwbauer]

No, it is more like a search warrant to search the cabinet for a document containing evidence that the defendant communicated about the crime with someone else (a letter or a written description of what they were stealing, etc.). The police would have to look at every document in the cabinet to find the one they were looking for unless the defendant was extremely well-organized and had everything extremely well indexed, etc.

I'll agree that they should be required to delete all irrelevant emails after looking at them.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[kwbauer]

Can you imagine the outcry of "invasion of privacy" were the police to explain all the details of the case to Google employees?

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[rtb61]

A far better analogy is snail mail. The judge has granted the right to enter an unlimited number of recipients houses and recover mail sent to them. The real question is who owns that mail, the senders, the receivers, the handlers or the, the ISP. That is the tricky question with regards to email versus snail mail and that technically email should be legally treated exactly the same as snail mail because by and large that is the public expectation.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Anonymous Coward]

it's often said that it's only the stupid criminals that get caught

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[cavreader]

Yes he recognizes that the characteristics defining the US government behavior have been in a state of change since day 1. Governmental changes are changed based upon the cultural, economic, and the basic societal environment that exists in each era. It's hard to critique and judge government actions and behaviors in the past by using today's moral, economic, average public mindset, and ethical standards .And a lot of people argue the changes taking place somehow represents a decline when in fact the US government and the US in general has never reached the pinnacle of civilized governance and behavior from which to decline from. We have a Constitution serving as the bedrock of government behavior and societal responsibilities but even that document stated "all men are created equal" when in fact this basic idea was demonstrably false. Changes have been made for 200+ years and we still have some more work to do before "all men created equal" idea is an actual realized in practice..I have always believed the Constitutional ideas and protections serves a goal to strive towards and there are still changes needed before we can reach that goal.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[RubberDogBone]

Precisely. This is akin to obtaining a generic search warrant and upon finding my 8" kitchen knife, seizing it to see who I might have stabbed with it. Nevermind if it's used and put away in a knife block or new in the package never used, the existence of said knife is not in and of itself evidence of anything. But not according to such a warrant.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[mikelieman]

By tolerating the existance of the 'Bad Apples', the 'so-called Good Apples' aren't good. They're bad, too.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Uberbah]

Except that was the point to begin with: warrants are limited in scope for a reason.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Uberbah]

A tip usually isn't enough for a search warrant. ...which would require an arrest warrant, with an even higher burden of proof, and a prosecutor that thinks they can make a case on more than just a few pictures of you not even taken in your house. That's not very Scottish, either.

Except cops and prosecutors do worse than that, with less evidence to start with, on a regular basis. With "tips" based on information the cops either made up or acquired illegally, and the judge signs off on the warrant using the "confidential informant" excuse.

Re:Warrants are supposed to be narrow

[Jane Q. Public]

How is searching an entire hard-drive for a particular thing (a file containing X) any different than searching an entire house for a .40 S&W handgun. Knowing the basics of file structures, would you have them specify which sectors on which tracks of which platters to search? Please, lets be a little bit realistic about things.

It isn't, necessarily. It depends on what they're searching for, which we don't know from the story. Don't assume I'm being "unrealistic" just because you didn't read my comment carefully. I said the question is whether it was justified. TFA itself says some courts say no.

Well, it *is* consistent

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's okay to go through someone's locally-stored data, why not their remotely-stored data? It's not like there's a fundamental difference. If there were such a difference, then using the cloud would be a perfect "you can't get me" loophile.

Example of slippery slope

[Anonymous Coward]

Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein argued that a search of this type was no more invasive than the long-established practice of granting a warrant to copy and search the entire contents of a hard drive, and that alternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, ....

So, if a judge years ago did not allow the searching of a hard drive, this judge wouldn't have anything to stand on.

See, when the cops are allowed to do something seemingly little, then it allows for something else seemingly little, and so on and so on.

Our freedoms and liberties are being chipped away everyday.

Back during the Bush admin when folks were cautioning about the increased Executive powers, they were labeled "UnAmerican", "Liberal" or some other non-sense. When it was pointed out that the next Administration would get those same powers - meaning a Democrat may get them (and did) - it went over their heads.

And then there are the folks who discount the "Slippery Slope" argument as a logical fallacy.

Well, here you go.

I am concerned as to how far this will go in the future. And I hope the ACLU and EFF is all over this.

Re:Example of slippery slope

[LordLimecat]

So, if a judge years ago did not allow the searching of a hard drive, this judge wouldn't have anything to stand on.

Or, the judge in this case would have set that precedent using the same reasoning that judge years ago did.

Re:Example of slippery slope

[mlw4428]

Why is this any different to you than a search warrant against your house?

Re:Example of slippery slope

[Anonymous Coward]

Your house doesn't contain copies of every conversation you ever had.

Re:Example of slippery slope

[Anonymous Coward]

Your premise is that if a judge didn't allow the searching of a hard drive years ago, we wouldn't be able to search e-mail today?

I'm sorry, but that is NOT a slippery slope. That is simply things being invented. Imagine that there was a time before combination safes. Before that time, there were no warrants for searching combination safes. Now, imagine that the combination safe is invented.

If a judge issues the first warrant to search an individual's combination safe, is this a slippery slope?

Personally, I don't think so.

" and particularly describing"

[Anonymous Coward]

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] 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.

Re:" and particularly describing"

[beatle42]

In this case the "place to be searched" is described as their gmail account, right?

Re:" and particularly describing"

[messymerry]

What? ...and we are supposed to honor this barbaric relic called a constitution. It's more fun to make shit up as you go. The State is full to overflowing with people that get their jollies looking in other people's medicine cabinets and underwear drawers. The Internet is the dream of the Stasi.

Re:" and particularly describing"

[Ash-Fox]

particularly describing the place to be searched

Check.

and the persons or things to be seized.

Check.

No problem here, go home.

Re:" and particularly describing"

[LordLimecat]

The warrant in question describes the gmail account to be searched, based upon probable cause.

The Bill of Rights ensures due process, it doesnt say that you can use Gmail as a shield for illegal activity.

Re:" and particularly describing"

[LordLimecat]

You do realize that authorities have ALWAYS been able to "look in medicine cabinets and underwear drawers", if they had probable cause and were issued a warrant by the courts?

Yall need to go home, this isnt the "government overreach" story you're looking for.

Re:" and particularly describing"

[Duhavid]

and the persons or things to be seized.

from what I have read, they do not specify the person or things to be seized except "everything".

In my mind, "No Check".

Re:" and particularly describing"

[nabsltd]

from what I have read, they do not specify the person or things to be seized except "everything".

We don't know that, as nothing has reported what they can "seize", only what they can "search". They are permitted to search the entire account. My guess would be that prosecutors would then take everything they found which they believed was relevant and bring it before the judge, who would then give the yes/no for each piece, seeing as how that's how evidence works in every case.

Also, if the government has some sort of injunction to prevent the defendant from using the account (reasonable, since they could destroy or fabricate evidence), it has already been "seized", and would need to remain so until the trial was complete. Getting a snapshot of everything now could actually allow the defendant to resume using the account, so that the "seizure" period would be minimized.

Re:" and particularly describing"

[Anonymous Coward]

Only argument is on the probable cause. if the warrant is issued then it is not unreasonable. the place searched is the mail archive, not unlike they would go through the printed documents found, looking for the same "things" (are paper files only allowed to be seached with a keyword search? how does that work?) as they do the email - and if those papers happen to document other crimes then tough fucking luck.

Re:" and particularly describing"

[sjames]

So now it just needs to describe particular things to be to be seized. Everything is too broad.

Re:" and particularly describing"

[HiThere]

That's a pretty big place to be called "particularly described".

OTOH, it looks as if they are only allowed to look for evidence of one particular kind of crime. That narrows it a bit, if the restriction can be believed. Unfortunately, a lot of instances of "independent construction" have come to light, which shed a lot of doubt on how well this kind of restriction is enforced. (True, this case doesn't involve the spooks, but the same processes can be used.)

Re:" and particularly describing"

[Duhavid]

My understanding is that they are supposed to know enough about what they are looking for to say what it is.

Is it how evidence works in every case?

Is it the same?

[dingleberrie]

Isn't all criteria, by definition, more narrowly tailored than no criteria?

In your house, you can throw out things and hide others in a secret place, on your hard drive you can throw out things and encrypt others.
Does this Gmail account allow you to throw-out and hide things? Is it really analogous?

How narrow is the search?

[sjbe]

If it's okay to go through someone's locally-stored data, why not their remotely-stored data?

The question isn't local versus remote. The question is narrowly tailored search versus fishing expedition. If they have enough evidence to justify a search of someone's entire account (or local hard drive) then it shouldn't be hard to convince a judge to issue a warrant with those search parameters. However warrants should be as as narrowly defined as possible based on the available evidence. If you suspect someone of burglary that likely does not constitute sufficient grounds to search their hard drive (or google account) for in its entirety unless to police have specific and credible evidence to the contrary. Warrants are supposed to have the minimum necessary search parameters.

I'm not familiar with the particulars of this case but I can think of plenty of circumstances where it would be quite inappropriate to search someone's entire account. There are also circumstances where it is perfectly appropriate but the warrant should not be that broad without damn good reason.

Re:How narrow is the search?

[CaptainDork]

Good point, because this is a slippery slope.

The scary thought is that the government could get a warrant to confiscate ALL of a suspect's stuff on the grounds that evidence may exist in the defendant's truck, house, place of business, in the form of data that exists anywhere ...

To me, the government is saying, "We don't have enough on this guy, so give us everything he's got and maybe we can make a case."

And maybe not.

You are correct that it's a fishing expedition.

Re:How narrow is the search?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can argue all day about the conditions under which it's fair to let the authorities search a suspect's full hard drive, but if those conditions are met, then it absolutely makes sense that the authorities should be able to search an online email account. You can't just say "if they're looking for [keyword] then they should only be able to run a query in the email database for emails with [keyword] in them".

If the cops have a warrant to search for drugs in your house, they'll go through everything (and if I recall correctly, they can't bust you if they find something illegal that's not on their warrant... right?). If the cops have a warrant to search for evidence of a crime on your hard drive, they'll look at everything and not just run a bunch of automatic searches with keywords that may of may not get results. So it stands to reason that if they have a warrant to search your emails, they should be able to read all emails, and not ask Google to run queries.

Now in this case, maybe the warrant was unjustified, I don't know. But if it was justified, then the fact that the authorities could go through the suspect's entire GMail account is not shocking at all.

Re:How narrow is the search?

[mythosaz]

The police certainly can bust you if they find something else while searching for your house for {something _else}, provided that {something_else} was found while legally executing the original search.

If the police have been following your bookmaking or money laundering operation for some time, and they come to your house with a nice broad warrant to collect all files, records and ledgers, they can still bust you for the marijuana grow room they walk into while looking for file cabinets.

Re:How narrow is the search?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure that is a bad thing in theory. in practice ofcourse it means if you do not find exactly what you need you can conceivably find something else (even if minor). I dont see a problem in a drug-operation coming to light and being dealt with during the investigation of a money laundering operation - but where to draw the line between that and privacy is hard...

It is like you think people have a right to break the law if they can hide it and not amount of accidental discovery can possibly be used against someone... are you a lawyer?

Re:How narrow is the search?

[mythosaz]

IANAL, TINLA

The common argument here is that police can always find something. Any car can be pulled over, but it *generally* takes a fairly lengthy investigation for them to obtain a search warrant your house (if you didn't already let them in the door).

Probably the example I can think of with the least work would be search warrants based on power usage to find marajuana grows, but even those seem to be corroborated with routine investigative work -- or at least tips from disgruntled customers or smaller fish bargaining for a better deal. But even when you're dealing drugs from your house, generally speaking it's going take multiple confirmed buys from CI's or UC's before the warrant gets executed. The feds coming for your file cabinets are similar. Sure, there's some rubber-stamping judges out there, but most departments seem to know they've got a "reasonable" barrier to meet before warrants are granted for houses. ...cars? Not so much.

Hurr.

[Anonymous Coward]

Our freedoms and liberties are being chipped away everyday.

Please inform me what freedoms and liberties are being chipped away by seizure of personal effects with a valid warrant, in the same manner that has happened since the founding of this country.

Because that's what we're talking about here.

Not that I don't appreciate HURRR EN ESS EHHHH DURRR, but seriously, shitting MUH FREEDUMBS all over the place is part of the reason nobody takes the problem seriously. Because y'all sound like a bunch of crackpots.

Re:Hurr.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just it, it isn't a valid warrant - it's an overly broad dragnet as they don't have enough evidence to "know" what to search for.

Those kinds of warrants are illegal, and go against "illegal search / seizure".

Just because a corrupt judge signs off on it, doesn't make it legal.

Re:Hurr.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we should all just sit by quietly while our freedoms are corroded, because god forbid we are seen as crackpots by idiots like you.

Re:Hurr.

[hoggoth]

> Just because a corrupt judge signs off on it, doesn't make it legal.

Actually, when a judge signs off on it, like it or not, the warrant by definition becomes legal.

As the old song goes

[Sockatume]

I'm wary of the slippery slope fallacy, but this seems like a genuine example of an instance where a slightly troubling activity - keeping images of people's entire hard drives - has led to a broader and more troubling one.

And if you tolerate this,
Then your email will be next
Will be next
Will be next
Will be next

Re:As the old song goes

[sjames]

That's just it. Slippery slope is often NOT a fallacy. Anywhere where precedent is followed, such as law, permits a logical argument behind the slippery slope. Anything involving human psychology (boiling the frog) likewise.

Re:As the old song goes

[HiThere]

The trouble is, this isn't the usual slippery slope. This started out as a reasonable legal procedure back when hard disks were small. The slippery slope was the storing more and more of personal history in digital forms. Originally allowing all digital media to searched was reasonable. Now it's quite a bit less so. Next year it will be worse.

(What was unreasonable before is that they would seize the hardware and keep it to punish the accused, often never getting around to actually filing a case.. The punishment was the loss of business records, etc. It was still abuse, but a different abuse.)

Two sides to this...

[SailorSpork]

One one hand, I join in the mob rage that this warrant is obviously to broad / vague. On the other hand, as of 2014 in the US this data still need a search warrant to obtain. Let's see how this conversation goes in 2020. Maybe by then US will stand for Universal Surveillance.

Re:Two sides to this...

[Sowelu]

Thing is, that's not actually so bad to me at all. If you could tell whether someone was lying or telling the truth about performing some illegal act--and be certain of it (big assumption)--I'd wholeheartedly support it. It would catch criminals a lot faster, and exonerate the innocent a lot faster, what on earth could be bad about that? As you're describing it, it doesn't sound like it's violating any privacy of yours, except for the specific fact "did you commit the crime". It's just a one-shot perfectly accurate truth serum.

It certainly doesn't violate the 5th Amendment. The "no self incrimination" is specifically to cut down on coerced, inaccurate testimony. If this thing was accurate, it's a completely different issue.

It seems to me that almost every Internet Anti-Government Crusader's true agenda is "protect my right to lie to the authorities", or "protect my right to not get caught". Doesn't get any of my respect.

Re:Two sides to this...

[HiThere]

You have a lot more faith in the integrity of the government than I do.

Re:Two sides to this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom is the reasonable expectation that you could get away with doing something illegal and then choosing either not to do it or to do it.

What you are hoping for is not freedom.

Congress can solve these ambiguities

[Anonymous Coward]

But they won't.

Save America: Re-elect no one. Ever.

And for us non gmailers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wondering what would happen to us folks that roll our own mail server. Is there already a red flag out there that they can't see our email or we would just get the warrant in the mail asking for us to turn over our own information?

Hang on, I think there's a knock at the door...

Re:And for us non gmailers?

[Sockatume]

They'd presumably just seize the server as evidence.

Stop copying hard drives too!

[MobyDisk]

no more invasive than the long-established practice of granting a warrant to copy and search the entire contents of a hard drive

This "long-established practice" has always been a violation of the 4th amendment. The recent case where the US government used hard drive data from a *different* case is proof that they should not do this. They should never get the entire hard drive contents. A neutral 3rd-party should copy the drive, perform an appropriate search, then erase the copy. There's no reason for the government to indefinitely hold copies of data they should never have had in the first place.

Just imagine if they had a warrant to get your address book, but they kept a copy of every piece of paper in your entire home, just in case it became relevant later. There is no way that would be allowed. But the digital equivalent is somehow acceptable.

Re:Stop copying hard drives too!

[Sarten-X]

A neutral 3rd-party should copy the drive, perform an appropriate search, then erase the copy.

The police are that neutral third party. Clearly they are not you, and they are also not the people who accuse you (or the prosecutor representing the people).

A large part of our justice system is focused on keeping them neutral. The fact that the investigators did not erase their copy, but rather retained it, is why the appeals court in that case reversed the judgement.

Re:Stop copying hard drives too!

[MobyDisk]

I thought the judged dinged them only for using the data, not retaining it. I am under the impression retaining it is standard practice. Is that not the case?

Who holds and filters the data in a civil case?

Re:Stop copying hard drives too!

[dagarath]

Police are not a neutral third party. They are paid by the same state that pays the prosecutor and the judicial system. Neutrality in that setting is legal fiction.

Re:Stop copying hard drives too!

[ADRA]

If the police enter your house on spousal abuse and see a pound of coke on your coffee table, you're still going to arrested for both. If you wanted to be a smart criminal, learn to segregate your data better, stupid.

Re:Stop copying hard drives too!

[MobyDisk]

The rules are completely different when warrants are involved.

Re:Stop copying hard drives too!

[Kijori]

Who else is going to pay the neutral third party? The tooth fairy?

Whoever you choose is going to be paid by the state.

let me be the first to say...

[davethomask]

Congratulations, Gabriel on figuring that one out!

Two sides to this...

[Anonymous Coward]

By 2020, the police will have the right to question you while monitoring your brain to determine the truth of what you say. You won't even have to answer because they will know from your brain's response what you were going to say.
After all it's no different to scanning the complete history of your digital life and looking for crimes and that became law in 2014.

Minimally invasive searches

[sjbe]

How does this differ from a typical search warrant for a premises?

It might not be any different. However even a warrant for a premises is not (supposed to be) without limits. If the information sought can be reasonably obtained through less intrusive means then it is supposed to be obtained through those alternative means. If the cops are interested in someones google account (or hard drive - same principle) because they have credible suspicion about information that may be contained there then a warrant is fine but only to the extent necessary to search for and safeguard the information sought.

Basically if the judge is saying that searching an entire account is appropriate merely because there is a chance investigators might miss something then there is a problem. The entire point of a getting judicial review prior to a search is so that searches do not become wider than absolutely necessary. Part of that is so that people don't become accused of crimes they otherwise would not have been under suspicion of. Giving carte-blanche to search someone's google account in many cases is opening up their entire life to a search so there had better be a damn good reason to permit a search that broad.

Re:Minimally invasive searches

[Anonymous Coward]

Any other crimes they find, they can't use. That is how warrants work. They are searching all of the person's email for content related to the crime they are investigating. Anything else, whether they see it or not, is inadmissible.

Re:Minimally invasive searches

[Anonymous Coward]

Only until they go back to the judge and get a new warrant for it.

Re:Minimally invasive searches

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty certain your mistaken. Evidence they find of another crime can be utilized so long as its not beyond the warrant's search authorization and is in plain sight. That is to say if they enter into the warrant they are searching for child pornography at address B room C and are authorized to seize all electronics and then in the process of the search see a sawed off shot gun for which they believe to be illegal they can seize that as evidence of a crime too even if it is a different crime. That sawed off shot gun can then be used as evidence against you and another charge added to the list. On the other hand if they search your coin box and find illegally gotten treasure it can't in theory be used against you since they were exceeding the warrant's parameters and the coins weren't in plain sight.

Re:Minimally invasive searches

[Anonymous Coward]

Any other crimes they find, they can't use. That is how warrants work.

The problem is, this warrant isn't for information about a specific crime, it's a warrant to search the account, period.

Re:Minimally invasive searches

[marka63]

Given the size of usb sticks. Searching a coin box would be reasonable.

Re:Minimally invasive searches

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but given the pretty broad use of parallel construction these days do you think that really matters anymore?

No limits on storage or security

[timrod]

What really disturbs me about this article is how the judge set no limits on how long the police can retain copied emails or how they have to store them. Judging by the way the police act, I wouldn't be surprised if this meant large, permanently-retained NSA style databases of captured emails.

Re:No limits on storage or security

[blueg3]

Judging by how the police actually operate, a hard drive with that data will be put in a box and put into storage with a large collection of other such boxes, probably never to be seen again.

Re:No limits on storage or security

[Sowelu]

"Top men."

Re:No limits on storage or security

[Anonymous Coward]

What really disturbs me about this article is how the judge set no limits on how long the police can retain copied emails or how they have to store them. Judging by the way the police act, I wouldn't be surprised if this meant large, permanently-retained NSA style databases of captured emails.

The way it should work is that anything found pertaining to the case it retained (indefinitely) so that it may reviewed later on for appeals, while everything else gets wiped from the police's copy.

Re:No limits on storage or security

[Kijori]

The court actually took a pretty sensible view on this, I think.

The judge's reasoning was that the use of data that was recovered and stored was (as a matter of law) subject to the same test of reasonableness as what could be recovered in the first place. He considered trying to decide how long was reasonable now, but decided that he wasn't in a position to do so, since he didn't know how the investigation would go. Better for a later court, looking back on all the facts, to decide whether what was done was reasonable, than for him to try to decide what would be reasonable based on a guess as to what would happen.

In other words, there are limits on storage and use of the data, although they aren't rigid, and a court may be called on to decide whether they have been breached at a later date.

Currently not the biggest problem

[bickerdyke]

With several gouvernment agencies currently ignoring constitutional rights, specific warrents effecting specifically named persons, issued and overseen by judges, are NOT the biggest threat to privacy.

Limitations on law enforcement

[sjbe]

Have you ever tried to find something in your email account that you know is there but couldn't locate it using any search terms that came to mind, only to find it later along with something completely unrelated? How hard do you think it would be to describe to a Google employee the type of information you want them to search for in (likely) thousands of emails and get a perfect success rate (assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that that's the only satisfactory outcome)?

Law enforcement is not entitled to a perfect success rate. If they have evidence that justifies searching an entire account then fine but I defy you to come up with more than a handful of cases where such a blanket search is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. We put limits on law enforcement because law enforcement has a LONG history of abusing power. The majority of the Bill of Rights is devoted to limiting the power of law enforcement. We put these limits in place knowing full well that the result will be that some guilty people go free because the alternative is to convict innocent people. The job of law enforcement is not supposed to be easy or convenient.

I don't get the fuss, it's not like you have some right to hide suspected (they got a warrant) illegal activities just because they're recorded in an email archive stored somewhere other than your computer's hard drive.

Strawman argument. The question is whether the warrant and the activities permitted are appropriately narrow to the circumstances. If they are then all is well. If the warrant allows a fishing expedition then it is an abuse of the judicial process. If the search criteria that can be justified is too narrow to result in information useful for a conviction then that is just too bad. If they don't have enough evidence to convince a (properly behaving) judge that a wider search is necessary then that is how the system is supposed to behave.

The only problem I have with it could be described as a slippery slope fallacy; that is, maybe the rules will become more relaxed over time as more judges build on this case.

It's not a slippery slope problem. The problem is that there is relatively little guidance on what the rules and parameters regarding these sorts of searches should be because the technology of online accounts has advanced somewhat ahead of the law. Could be that the warrant issued was perfectly appropriate to the circumstances. However the justification was given that "investigators might miss something" which is alarmingly insufficient. Yes, they might miss something and unless they have evidence to justify a very broad search then they should have to use less invasive means even if that means they might miss something. Better that 100 guilty men go free than a single innocent man be wrongly convicted. Searching someone's entire Google account is a very invasive search and there had better be a very good reason to allow it.

Re:Limitations on law enforcement

[Kijori]

I think it is easy to imagine circumstances where what you call a 'blanket' search - a search for specific categories of evidence, but which isn't limited by particular approved keywords - would be justified. I would expect it to be common, because I would expect it to be the only reasonable way to conduct the search in a great many cases.

I am a litigator. We regularly conduct similar searches during what Americans would call discovery - the pre-trial process where you look for evidence. Even if you know exactly what sort of thing you're looking for and are using specialist software designed for this process, it can take hundreds of man-hours and cost well over a hundred thousand dollars to search a large body of correspondence. I can tell you from experience that it is very difficult to pick keywords in advance without making them incredibly broad. If the person may have done something that they don't want to set out explicitly in an email, it can easily be impossible.

There is a strong public interest in effectively investigating crimes and bringing the perpetrators to justice. There has to be some mechanism to get access to email correspondence in order to conduct that investigation. In a big investigation, I can't see that it would be reasonable to require Google to carry out the searches required - it should be done by the police. I therefore think it is entirely plausible that a 'blanket' search warrant would be granted, and I haven't seen any reason not to trust the judge's assessment - after all, he has heard the evidence and you haven't.

Re:this one goes out...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to all you who cry about warrantless wiretaping, the lack of judicial review in the GWOT, and all that other stuff.

Well here you go, you got your [uber-lawyer who asnwers to no-one] involved. Happy now?

Yes? I may not like a lot of things, but as long as a judge is held accountable with their name on the warrant, I have no problems with this. No idea why it is an article. Seems like a forced clickbait article being about Google.

There is nothing wrong about searching an email account with a warrant. The only difference between this and a general "house search" warrant is that the contents are easily indexed. It is like going into a taxidermist office looking under homo sapiens for murder victims.

Case by Case

[GenaTrius]

It's up to a judge to decide what kind of warrant gets served.If they can authorize the search of a person's home and the arrest of that person, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to authorize the search of a person's full Gmail account if the need arises. As long as it's not a secret court and all due process is followed, then we're doing the best we can. The linked article makes no mention of the details of this court case. We have no idea why this Gmail account is being searched, who the Gmail account belongs to, how the search will be carried out, or how much data this particular Gmail account even contains. There's also no indication that the police will indefinitely retain a copy of the account, as some above have speculated. If they do, THAT is the problem, not the search itself.

It's like searching everywhere you ever lived

[WillAffleckUW]

A warrant like this is the equivalent to searching all the houses and apartments and cars and storage lockers you've ever had or anyone in your family or that ever met you ever had.

We fought a Revolution over this.

But Americans today are not made of the metal that would stand up against such things.

Sadly.

Repeat after me: Baaaaaaah!

Unconstitutional

[tlambert]

This is unconstitutional under the fourth amendment.

There is no difference between this type of search and a Writ of Assistance, which is precisely one of the reasons that the U.S. Constitutions Fourth Amendment was written.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Re:Unconstitutional

[Sowelu]

Let's not exaggerate about "no difference". Writs of assistance, and searches in general, back in the revolutionary days were highly disruptive to life and business. If someone copies out your entire gmail folder you probably won't notice it, it's not like they'll be taking up space and getting in your way and throwing your files around as you try to read it yourself. They were even used to gain entrance to a place and trash it under the guise of a search.

I'm not making a value judgment on the merits of this case or whether it's reasonable or not, but you are drawing a false equivalency. Seizing all of a person's electronics equipment or servers is a much closer analogy. Non-destructive copying with zero downtime is not.

Re:Unconstitutional

[HiThere]

You might want to look at some house after the police have searched it, if you don't think they are still extremely disruptive. They are generally worse if they don't find what they hoped to find. Wantonly destructive is not always an overstatement.

Re:Unconstitutional

[Kijori]

"No difference"?

[Writs of assistance] were permanent and even transferable: the holder of a writ could assign it to another. Any place could be searched at the whim of the holder, and searchers were not responsible for any damage they caused. This put anyone who had such a writ above the law. [Wikipedia]

[The court grants] a warrant to obtain emails and other information from a "Gmail" account, which is hosted by Google, Inc., and to permit a search of those emails for certain specific categories of evidence. [Judgment in this case]

Yep, exactly the same...

Slippery Slope

[Anonymous Coward]

If they had a warrant to search a home for a missing television, they could look inside a closet and may find all sorts of other things, even though they were only searching for a TV.

I would say that a single user accounts entire Gmail could be searched but still only for specific texts, otherwise it's a fishing expedition.

flithy jew judge

[Anonymous Coward]

do I need to say anymore?

the government you get...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is the one you deserve.

Who is next?

[Bust0ut]

Answer this question and you will get no sympathy from me if it is searched.