Re: Raiding your Inbox

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Richmond, Elizabeth B. (RICHMOEB@uwec.edu)
Mon, 4 Dec 2006 12:44:07 -0600



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!"



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