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| culorut |
Feds Can Search Your E-Mail Without Notice
No matter how much of our personal lives exist in e-mail services such as Gmail, a U.S. District Court judge says if the government takes a look at your e-mail.
The opinion by federal judge Michael Mosman, handed down in Portland, Oregon, involves a case in which the government has probable cause for a search and asked Google to provide nine months of a Gmail subscriber's e-mails, seeking evidence of the crime. Furthermore, the feds asked that the search warrant be sealed and that the user shouldn't be told what was happening.
Gmail isn't the only e-mail provider that might face this situation. Other services, including Microsoft's Hotmail and AOL, say in their usage terms that they'll share information with the government when required by warrant or court order. What's shocking is that this could be happening without your knowledge.
Mosman's ruling reversed an earlier decision that the user must get a receipt after the government rifles through e-mail. Though he says electronic communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure, those protections don't apply to the e-mail user. If the government takes a look at your e-mail, the obligation to disclose what was searched ends at the Internet Service Provider.
Mosman gives this analogy: If the government seizes a package sent by FedEx, the recipient and the sender don't have to be told, as long as FedEx gets a copy of the warrant. Also, Mosman wrote that the government didn't take any property, so to speak, because e-mail can be viewed from anywhere.
The nut of the issue is that Mosman doesn't liken e-mail to personal property stored at home. "If a suspect leaves private documents at his mother's house and the police obtain a warrant to search his mother's house, they need only provide a copy of the warrant and a receipt to the mother, even though she is not the 'owner' of the documents," he writes.
However, Mosman writes that the law remains unclear about whether information stored online is like a "virtual home." I think enough people assume so that we need some legislation to iron this out.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/1810...udge_rules.html |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: |
involves a case in which the government has probable cause for a search |
how is this news? the government can search anything as long as they have probably cause. |
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| Krypton |
| Time to call the ACLU! |
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| tathi |
ed up none the less.
/goes back to using gmail to organise a big batch of disco pebbles for me and my mates for the Steve Bug boat cruise this weekend... |
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| culorut |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
how is this news? the government can search anything as long as they have probably cause. |
Well in this day and age "probable cause" means something totally different (anything they in want) to the government then what it really is.
All they have to do is send a request to an ISP and they will hand over your info without you knowing.
Shady. |
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| ziptnf |
| quote: | Originally posted by culorut
Well in this day and age "probable cause" means something totally different (anything they in want) to the government then what it really is.
All they have to do is send a request to an ISP and they will hand over your info without you knowing.
Shady. |
Why would the government snoop your email unless you had something to hide? ;) |
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| culorut |
| quote: | Originally posted by ziptnf
Why would the government snoop your email unless you had something to hide? ;) |
That is the way it is supposed to be but we all know this is not the case.
The phone tapping already proved this. |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by tathi
ed up none the less. |
why? how is this any different to any other warrant that may be executed in accordance with the law? police already conduct clandestine searches; an old highschool acquaintance of mine had his mail searched, ecstasy found, ecstasy removed and replaced with something harmless, suspect followed and arrested once the package was picked up.
oh noes, its nazi germany! :rolleyes: |
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