Subject: FW: Raiding your Inbox Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 12:44:07 -0600 Message-ID: <BDD0A3EABE40F04A8C7200805EDE5A6A04036427@PEPSI.uwec.edu> From: "Richmond, Elizabeth B." <RICHMOEB@uwec.edu>
for our information. Betsy Richmond
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
All Rights Reserved
Los Angeles Times
December 1, 2006 Friday
Home Edition
pg. 34
Raiding your inbox;
The Bush administration's assault on privacy rights soon could
reach e-mail
messages stored on the Web.
IN THE LATEST illustration of the Bush administration's
disregard for your
privacy, the Justice Department is trying to convince a panel of
federal judges
that the FBI should be free to read your e-mail without
obtaining a warrant.
It's not all your e-mail -- only messages left on a Web-based
system such as
Hotmail or on your Internet service provider's computers. A 1986
law forbids the
interception and disclosure of e-mail and other online
transmissions without a
warrant. But there is an exception. If the messages are more
than 180 days old,
they can be obtained merely with a subpoena or a court order,
which
investigators can obtain more easily than a warrant.
Now the Justice Department is arguing, in a case before an
appeals court in
Ohio, that even new messages can be obtained without a warrant
if their intended
recipient has already read them. The Justice Department views an
opened e-mail
left on a service provider's computer as more like a postcard
left on a table
than a sealed letter in a drawer. Which is to say, its owner has
no reasonable
expectation of privacy.
About a jillion e-mail users would beg to differ. .......of
the utility
of these services is that they enable people to keep all their
e-mail in one
place that can be reached from any Internet-connected computer,
not just the
one in their home or office.
The change in technology not only makes the Justice
Department's position
absurd, it undermines the law's 180-day limit. When the law was
drafted, e-mail
was typically stored by Internet service providers only until a
user dialed in
and checked his or her account. It would then be sent to the
subscriber's
computer and deleted from the provider's servers. Lawmakers set
the 180-day
threshold to distinguish between wanted but unread mail and
messages in
an abandoned account. Now users store e-mail on the Web for
years.
Given these changes, U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott was
right last month to
find that e-mails stored online cannot be read by investigators
without a
warrant. .....
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals should rein in the feds
and strike down
the provisions of the law that are out of sync with the
technological realities
of the broadband era -- and the privacy expectations of
Americans.
Ann C. Sparanese, MLS
Englewood Public Library
Englewood, NJ 07631
201-568-2215, ext 229
ALA Councilor-At-Large
"The opinions are my own!"