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Microsoft Can't Shield User Data From Government, Says Government (bloomberg.com)
Microsoft is now arguing in court that their customers have a right to know when the government is reading their e-mail. But "The U.S. said federal law allows it to obtain electronic communications without a warrant or without disclosure of a specific warrant if it would endanger an individual or an investigation," according to Bloomberg. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
The software giant's lawsuit alleging that customers have a constitutional right to know if the government has searched or seized their property should be thrown out, the government said in a court filing... The U.S. says there's no legal basis for the government to be required to tell Microsoft customers when it intercepts their e-mail... The Justice Department's reply Friday underscores the government's willingness to fight back against tech companies it sees obstructing national security and law enforcement investigations...
Secrecy orders on government warrants for access to private e-mail accounts generally prohibit Microsoft from telling customers about the requests for lengthy or even unlimited periods, the company said when it sued. At the time, federal courts had issued almost 2,600 secrecy orders to Microsoft alone, and more than two-thirds had no fixed end date, cases the company can never tell customers about, even after an investigation is completed.
Secrecy orders on government warrants for access to private e-mail accounts generally prohibit Microsoft from telling customers about the requests for lengthy or even unlimited periods, the company said when it sued. At the time, federal courts had issued almost 2,600 secrecy orders to Microsoft alone, and more than two-thirds had no fixed end date, cases the company can never tell customers about, even after an investigation is completed.
For a soviet united states of America!
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I'm pretty sure the government in going into the direction of using only secrecy orders ALL THE TIME. Easier, no complain, no report, no end date... why using the "normal" process anyway?
Dont they have some Datacenters in the EU region too? How about there? Can the US request Data from EU Datacenters?
Make America great again
What Germany needs is common-sense gun control, an assault-style weapons ban and for the 2nd amendment to be repealed. Get the guns off the streets. Tell those conservative repukianz Germans that they don't need their metal dicks to feel safe. White men in Germany should be pretty ashamed of their gun culture.
Not really the problem, which is the legal basis of forbidding Microsoft from telling their customers that their email has been intercepted by a third party despite what agreements were in place between Microsoft and their customers.
If you keep your mail local you will know when the government gives you a warrant to access your server.
Windows 10 "telimetry" data is everything from a browser history monitor to a keylogger. You couldnt get more dystopian if you ate a copy of 1984. The government knows it doesnt need to go far for data from windows users....those pesky Linux kids though....
Good people go to bed earlier.
everyone is a potential terrorist, and all countries are adversaries. Paranoid and hostile. Why isn't the world ending their reliance and cooperation with this country and its diseased government? The sooner, the better.
Microsoft is not in this case making any argument about shielding data from the government. This isn't a challenge to NSL's, overbroad warrants, the business records doctrine, or any other tool the government uses to access data. This shields nothing.
This is about notifying the user AFTER the data has been accessed. The government argues even that shouldn't be allowed.
used to be before Obama that government was held to higher standards in this regard. I'd hear more about how citizens had a constitutional right to privacy . How government needed search warrants before it could listen in. Now a days under Obama, favored elites are above the law while Snowden and Manning are labeled traitors. The establishment rigs the primaries and then reframes the news in terms of Russians bedding with the outsider. Forget that the establishment elites break the laws , lie under oath, are funded by foreign powers. Forget that Americans are supposed to have constitutional rights and that elected politicians are supposed to uphold those rights. How otherwise will Americans be "safe"??
Why doesn't someone sue the government over this? They are circumventing Constitutional rights with this type of behavior but until it gets before the SCOTUS nothing will change.
America has always been a country with problems. But, until relatively recently (last 50 years or so) freedom and liberty wasn't one of them. We have always been a fiercely free country. But, now we have to admit it: The terrorists won. The have destroyed our values from the inside. The question is, when will the American people fight back to restore our once great republic?
I support both Occupy and the Tea Party. No protest is without fault, but we can't let the establishment media tell us that protesters are nut jobs. Protest is what this country needs in droves.
"Where we're going, we don't need ... [lowers sunglasses over eyes] ... the Constitution."
used to be before Bush that government was held to higher standards in this regard. I'd hear more about how citizens had a constitutional right to privacy . How government needed search warrants before it could listen in. Now a days under Bush, favored elites are above the law while Snowden and Manning are labeled traitors. The establishment rigs the primaries and then reframes the news in terms of Russians bedding with the outsider. Forget that the establishment elites break the laws , lie under oath, are funded by foreign powers. Forget that Americans are supposed to have constitutional rights and that elected politicians are supposed to uphold those rights. How otherwise will Americans be "safe"??
Well... he warned you.
Or iOS?
Microsoft is just trying to keep honest people honest. How hard is it to provide a warrant? This is just a good way to keep some small town sheriff from looking into the email of the hot wife of the guy on the other town that he doesn't like. Or how about those stories of the sheriff and is brother, the county judge, that look to get financial gain on having someone's property closed down for a future investment? If there is no records, then the state doesn't know if they make an investigation later.
My ass!
A warrant should never be secret!
Keeping the consumer in the dark is as bad as the secret warrant thingie.
Microsoft will ( if they are saavy ) make money by charging 'the standard fee' for information, and actually sell the information
to anyone, even foreign governments...
Also - who's bringing the chips and beer to the party on Labor day?
Sounds like Microsoft needs to start sending weekly messages to people letting them know that their data haven't been accessed by the government.
"The U.S. says there's no legal basis for the government to be required to tell Microsoft customers when it intercepts their e-mail"
Based on legal interpretations of the constitution you MIGHT have some bases when the targets are foreign citizens (even though the constitution doesn't mention a difference between citizen/non-citizen right most of the time) but the Fourth amendment pretty clearly intends for citizens to be notified when the government was snooping through their things (via a warrant). The governments constant game of slight of hand to try to detract from that obvious intent doesn't change it ("electronic communications", "third party disclosure", "standing", etc). It's disturbing that they can even keep a straight face when arguing that warrantless searches, permanent gag orders and blanket warrants aren't antithetical to the constitution itself, the "legal basis" for all law in the United States of America.
https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/generalwarrantsmemo.pdf
Mandate complete openness in all of banking. Nobody gets to keep any dinancial secrets. Everybody knows where every single penny goes.
The US Constitution is one of limited government and enumerated powers. I don't see a constitutional basis for the government to tell companies what they can and cannot tell their customers; which of the enumerated powers is that supposed to be?
So, while customers don't necessarily "have a constitutional right to know if the government has searched or seized their property", the government certainly has no constitutional right to prohibit companies from telling customers anything they want.
The 4th Amendment is the highest law involved, and it trumps the others via the Supremacy clause. Federal claims to the contrary are not withstanding.
I would argue that forced rectal insertion of a copy of 1984 is more dystopian.
We need to give this government even more money and more power!
Don't you want this government in charge of your health care?
ALL I COULD THINK OF IS POWA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UMHnEx12mg
How long until the Supreme Court settles whether encrypted text constitutes protected speech?
This is the very reason. For some reason my safety deposit box is protected from this crap, but if my documents are digital and are stored in the cloud equivalent then all my rights go away?
SCOTUS somehow found a bunch of exceptions in this sentence:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.".
Not sure what language they are using for their interpretation but it must not be English.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
And thus why I don't use anything "cloud" or anything else I can't physically turn off and/or disconnect. Here it is again: don't use technology to do anything you want to keep private. The microsecond you put it on the internet it's public. If it's electronic and it makes you life easy - think very carefully about what you use it for. Convenience for you normally = convenient for the law enforcement, hackers and anyone else that wants that info. And don't be like the drug dealer I had to sit and listen to when I was on jury duty last month: sync you phone often to at least try to erase the deleted messages.
I think there are two main reasons to agree with Microsoft. In legal terms, there is long established case law that Fourth Amendment protections apply equally to renters as well as property owners. Microsoft is in the same position with respect to on-line assets as a landlord is to physical property. The landlord has to respect the tenant's privacy.
In terms of public expectations, I have discussed the issue of technical privacy concerns with non-technical people on many occasions and they expect the software vendors, on-line providers and other experts to protect them. That includes Microsoft. There is a popular belief among technical people that ordinary people must not care about their privacy because they do nothing to protect it. However, when I have pressed ordinary people to explain why they don't protect their own privacy, it boils down to two things. First, they don't know how to do id and presume any technical measure they take on their own behalf is likely to fail. Also, they presume that the experts have reviewed license agreements and privacy policies and won't let anything too outrageous stand for long. Second, many people are afraid that any (probably ineffective) measure they take to protect their own privacy is only likely to draw attention to them as someone who has something to hide. So, according to what I see, the consensus is that experts should be the ones to protect privacy and these protection measures should apply to everyone by default.
Per capita statistics are almost entirely bullshit. Germany is lots smaller than the US and has far less diversity.
Put lots more people of differing socio economic backgrounds together and you will get "friction".
Pull out our top 10 most violent cities and we fall way down the list on gun violence.
Take a look at this video if you doubt me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
About half of all our gun deaths are suicides.
As a libertarian, I refuse to put the cost of those suicides on everyone else.
If a person wants to end their life, it is their life to do as they please. Gun-owners are not responsible for the actions of suicidal folks any more than they are responsible for the slow suicide that is smoking, drinking, and eating to excess.
Everything Windows is already shared with US gov. It is the reason it has all the spyware in it.
If you are concerned about privacy, either run your own email server where you control the database, or don't use email at all.
Time to reboot the government.
SECURE IN THEIR PERSON AND PAPERS .... hmm... it seems the founders didn't include email ? So much for civil rights ?
LMOL yeah ok Potsy. You're forgetting the fact that email is routed and that ISPs and all nodes in between have copies.
and it makes the country safer because the risk of trouble is lowered because of obvious reasons.
if you're not doing anything bad then you have nothing to hide.
but, i don't agree with what the government labels as bad/illegal.
but, even if you are doing something illegal or if you admit to something illegal the cia and nsa won't prosecute or anything.
they might give the information to the fbi, though.
im not sure if everyone should know this, but i do believe that if you know you are being surveilled, that you will cause less trouble ...... and i want there to be less trouble caused in our country and in the world ....... this is my attempt to do that. besides, this same information is probably all over the internet or tons of people know it anyways ..... i totally hope that bad guys cause less trouble in the world ..... so to all of you bad guys reading this ...... they hear everything you say on the phone and everything you send in emails, and probably everywhere you move at all times with radar dish technology ..... and they might not do anything about you causing trouble too .... that is why it is a little crazy ......
There was a time during Prohibition that the government argued, that it had an absolute right to monitor phone calls. No warrants, no due process, no restrictions. They lost and sanity returned to police surveillance.
Most of the people they wanted to monitor were guilty as hell you understand. Doesn't matter. Without due process the government is setting itself up as a modern day Star Chamber. Warrantless surveillance is right and good and lawful because they are the government and they want it. No other justification is needed.
This is just the modern day version of the Divine Right of Kings. If you are the King then life is good because you can do anything you want. If someone claims you are against the nation, then simply claim that you as King are the nation. Why not, after all you've already given yourself divine rights...
Oh so Microsoft think it's fine for them to read everything on your machine, all the time, without any oversight or way for the "customer" to opt out but don't want to share this facility with the government ?
And they think making this noise is a good P.R. exercise ?
What a bunch of cynical bastards they truly are.
used to be before Bush that government was held to higher standards in this regard. I'd hear more about how citizens had a constitutional right to privacy . How government needed search warrants before it could listen in. Now a days under Bush, favored elites are above the law while Snowden and Manning are labeled traitors. The establishment rigs the primaries and then reframes the news in terms of Russians bedding with the outsider. Forget that the establishment elites break the laws , lie under oath, are funded by foreign powers. Forget that Americans are supposed to have constitutional rights and that elected politicians are supposed to uphold those rights. How otherwise will Americans be "safe"??
Talk about something you know. You obviously have absolutely no idea how e-mail works. I set mine up so they're all using encryption. My customers send e-mail from company to company and it comes and goes to a private company owned Linux box. No Microsoft, verizon, etc involved. NOBODY can read that e-mail, so there. Of course, those Linux machines have to be hardened, watched and maintained. Not like what the Democrats did. They didn't care about security, they were hacked - easily from what the reports say.
If you're sending to a gmail, hotmail, all of those public free places - yea, don't expect privacy there. Not only can the government get it, a lot of other people can get it.
Seems like we all need something evidentially tempting randomly added by us to our data that is way too good not to follow up, which is in actuality a honey trap.
For example, buried in your email is a URL associated with something like "Don't tell the cops but this is where/how you get the good stuff". If LEO follow this up by browsing to this URL, it captures all the info it can about the visitor and sends it to you or a trusted third party. Which suggests to them that interception is occurring.