Yahoo, Feds Battle Over E-Mail Privacy

[n2doc]

By David Kravets April 14, 2010 | 4:20 pm | Categories: The Courts, privacy
Yahoo and federal prosecutors in Colorado are embroiled in a privacy battle that’s testing whether the Constitution’s warrant requirements apply to Americans’ e-mail.

The legal dust-up, unsealed late Tuesday, concerns a 1986 law that already allows the government to obtain a suspect’s e-mail from an ISP or webmail provider without a probable-cause warrant, once it’s been stored for 180 days or more. The government now contends it can get e-mail under 180-days old if that e-mail has been read by the owner, and the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections don’t apply.

Yahoo is challenging the government’s position and defying a court order to turn over some customer e-mail to the feds. Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy & Technology and other groups late Tuesday told the federal judge presiding over the case that accessing e-mail under 180 days old requires a valid warrant under the Fourth Amendment, regardless of whether it has been read.

“The government says the Fourth Amendment does not protect these e-mails,” Kevin Bankston, an EFF lawyer, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “What we’re talking about is archives of our personal correspondence that they would need a warrant to get from your computer but not from the server.”

If the courts adopt the government’s position, the vast majority of Americans’ e-mail would be accessible to the government without probable cause, whenever law enforcement believes the messages would be relevant to a criminal investigation, even if the e-mail’s owner is not suspected of wrongdoing.



Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/emailprivacy/

[TexasObserver]

1. Wait until we get in a Democrat as president. This stuff will stop then.

Oh, wait. We do.

I applaud the president for the good things he's done, but there's virtually no difference between him and Dubya when it comes to government snooping. He doesn't give a damn about civil liberties. At all.

[n2doc]

2. kick n/t