[privacy] EFF Fights to Shield Email from Secret Government Searches

["Fergie" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

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Via The EFF.

[snip]

The government must have a search warrant before it can search and seize
emails stored by email service providers, according to a
friend-of-the-court brief filed last week by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of civil liberty groups. EFF filed the
brief in support of a landmark district court decision finding that the
federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) violates the Fourth Amendment by
allowing secret, warrantless searches and seizures of email stored with a
third party.

EFF's amicus brief was filed in Warshak vs. United States, a case brought
in the Southern District of Ohio federal court by Steven Warshak to stop
the government's repeated secret searches and seizures of his stored email
using the SCA. The district court ruled that the government cannot use the
SCA to obtain stored email without a warrant or prior notice to the email
account holder. The government, which has routinely used the SCA over the
past 20 years to secretly obtain stored email without a warrant, appealed
the decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court is now
primed to be the first circuit court ever to decide whether email users
have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their stored email.

The EFF brief was also signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the
ACLU of Ohio, and the Center for Democracy and Technology.

[snip]

More:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_11.php#005022

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

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