quote:

Justice Dept Demands Email Without Warrants


"In a brief filed Tuesday afternoon, the coalition says a search warrant signed by a judge is necessary before the FBI or other police agencies can read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages... "Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage,'" the prosecution wrote in a motion filed last month... Tuesday's brief from Google and the other groups aims to buttress Yahoo's position by saying users who store their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002423-38.html

quote:

ORIGINAL: Arpig

It appears the good guys have won
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002722-38.html?tag=mncol;txt

I think it would be obvious that there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy" I mean what are passwords for if not to provide one with privacy.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

Ho hum, now me, a dweeb who knows very little about the net has to open a school. Attention......

Any encryption scheme in the US must be registered with the government, save but a very few, and most of those are in the developmental stage and not used as of yet.

When you retrieve your email you put in a password, or your PC does it, whichever. It is encrpyted, then decrypted on the other side. When it is decrypted on the other side it is compared with a stored password and it must match or access is, of course, denied.

But the government holds what might be termed "master keys" to the algorythms used in all encryption schemes used by any US company, such as an ISP or any other service on the internet. As such it is quite easy for them to hack into any ISP or email provider and use their master key in reverse to get any password. What's more, most email does not encrypt the actual content, so they can look for keywords, such as..... maybe I shouldn't, but you know what I mean. They will not even take a second look at you without reason, as there are simply too many people to watch for the amount of people they have to watch us. They are working on that problem all the time I think.

It doesn't matter anyway, do you have any idea how warrants are issued today ? A judge gets a stack of them and signs them, that is all. Get it straight here, if you want true privacy, stay off the net. Period. The owners of this site would probably tell you the same thing as they may have had some things happen, remember certain people had to create a new username ? And CM staff can do nothing about it.

Actually I think Cmail is more private than email. While they can get to it, it is not all scanned because it does not go through a regular email server. In other words it is not scanned for certain keywords or phrases. That doesn't mean they can't get to it, it just means it is less likely to come under scrutiny.

I'll say this once and others can repeat it to the dense among us. EVERYTHING you type on the net, consider public. EVERYTHING, no exeptions. You want to talk about certain things you are better off in a crowded restaurant or at your kitchen table, or even on the phone.

Get it, got it, good.

T

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jeffff

A serious question.

Can Snail mail be opened without a warrant?

Shouldn't the same law apply?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity


I caught this on Rotten.com's Daily Rotten:

quote:

Justice Dept Demands Email Without Warrants


"In a brief filed Tuesday afternoon, the coalition says a search warrant signed by a judge is necessary before the FBI or other police agencies can read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages... "Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage,'" the prosecution wrote in a motion filed last month... Tuesday's brief from Google and the other groups aims to buttress Yahoo's position by saying users who store their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002423-38.html

quote:

DOJ abandons warrantless attempt to read Yahoo e-mail
The U.S. Justice Department has abruptly abandoned what had become a high-profile court fight to read Yahoo users' e-mail messages without obtaining a search warrant first.


In a two-page brief filed Friday, the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation. CNET was the first to report on the Denver case in an article on Tuesday.

Yahoo's efforts to fend off federal prosecutors' broad request attracted allies--in the form of Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation--who argued (PDF) that Americans who keep their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.


Full article at: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002722-38.html

quote:

ORIGINAL: DarkSteven
I also cannot understand why a case with clear national implications was decided by a Colorado judge.