Wednesday, May 08, 2013

FBI Documents Suggest It Needs No Warrant to Read Your Emails

FBI Documents Suggest It Needs No Warrant to Read Your Emails

"The content of your emails, Facebook chats, Twitter DMs and any other form of digital communication should be at the disposal of law enforcement agencies — without a warrant. At least that's what the Department of Justice and the FBI seem to think, according to newly revealed internal documents.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) through a Freedom of Information Act request, add more confusion and uncertainty to an already muddy legal landscape. Digital communications fall within the scope of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), a 1986 law that critics claim has become obsolete."

I know this is all a mess and needs to be fixed. I think these should laws should be defined in terms of concepts and not technologies. If you need a wiretap to listen to landline calls and a warrant to read mail, you should need the same for cell phone calls and email.

Now I know with some technologies it can be difficult to make comparisons. I think Facebook chat and messages is equivalent to email and needs a warrant, but posts to your wall/timeline shouldn't. Maybe it's basically anything that needs a password to see should require a warrant for law enforcement to see. If you can arrest me for breaking into someone's account (e.g., people hacking celebrities phones/email) police should need a warrant to do the same.

2 comments:

Karl said...

This is a tricky thing (and always seems to shut down promising new technologies when it is brought up). You might make an argument that wireless communications are using a public resource (i.e. spectrum) and therefore are more similar to a conversation on a public street. Your suggestion of using a password as a litmus test for expectation of privacy makes a lot of intuitive sense though.

Howard said...

Yeah I know about the public airways exception used for cell conversations now. Which of course just escalates to wanting to use encryption which then the government says you can't phone companies or such thing so then skype comes along...

But only people who really understand how the systems work would make a distinction between the expectation of privacy on a cell phone vs a landline.

I'll make the same argument to say that your expectations of privacy on the internet should be the same whether your isp is a cable company or a telco, even though those two traditionally had very different regulations. The much maligned patriot act actually did a fair amount to unify those two situations.