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IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

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Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#21

Post by maratd »

rayiner wrote: post #3

This statement: "Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy 'generally no privacy' in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications" is entirely consistent with the existence of Warshack. Warshack covers the Sixth Circuit, which includes the following states: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The IRS is bound by this precedent in those…

> If you understand how SMTP works, it's hard to argue that it's a private means of communication. You send a clear-text message to a publically-accessible service that is empowered to forward the message to other publically-accessible servers if necessary.

Whoa, hold it, I don't think so. Almost every SMTP server out there today requires authentication and quite a few require either SSL or TLS. That is the very definition of trying to keep things private.

Hell, I use Google's solution and have two-factor authentication set up.

Should I really start adding "this email is privileged and confidential" to every email like my lawyer?

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#22

Post by badgar »

will_brown wrote: post #17
rayiner wrote: post #3

This statement: "Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy 'generally no privacy' in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications" is entirely consistent with the existence of Warshack. Warshack covers the Sixth Circuit, which includes the following states: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The IRS is bound by this precedent in those…

Nice analysis. I tend to think the evolution of expectation of privacy from regular mail to email is similar to the evolution of expectation of privacy from land-line phones to cell phones. That is under the 4th Amendment land-line phone users have a reasonable expectation of privacy; therefore, Gov. must obtain a search warrant to use evidence gathered from such sources against the criminal defendant. Yet, Courts de…

IANAL, but cell phone calls are encrypted, and I'm pretty damn sure you need a warrant to legally decrypt a cell phone conversation over the air.

But I bet you wouldn't need a warrant if you wanted to just capture and show the existence of the emitted radio waves as evidence, ignoring their contents (if you were making some kind of a traffic analysis type of argument).

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#23

Post by unreal37 »

Is there any evidence that the IRS has ever been able to get access to people's emails without a warrant, or is this entire discussion theoretical? It seems to just be quoting a 2009 handbook recently obtained.

Google won't give your email away without a warrant, and neither will Facebook. So I'm not sure what this means.

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#24

Post by trent_91 »

Jach wrote: post #15

When will "does not give the option to encrypt all outgoing correspondence with my PGP public key" become as embarrassing for an important website as "doesn't have an SSL cert" or "emails/stores passwords in plaintext"? Edit: added word "outgoing" for pedant below. ;) Of course it'd be nice to get their public key too if you had to correspond back without going through say their https website.

It's not that long since PGP was considered weapons-grade munitions and could not be exported.

We may yet return to that stage.

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#25

Post by mimiflynn »

maratd wrote: post #21
rayiner wrote: post #3

This statement: "Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy 'generally no privacy' in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications" is entirely consistent with the existence of Warshack. Warshack covers the Sixth Circuit, which includes the following states: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The IRS is bound by this precedent in those…

> If you understand how SMTP works, it's hard to argue that it's a private means of communication. You send a clear-text message to a publically-accessible service that is empowered to forward the message to other publically-accessible servers if necessary. Whoa, hold it, I don't think so. Almost every SMTP server out there today requires authentication and quite a few require either SSL or TLS. That is the very defi…

Google's email isn't encrypted, it is sent as text over a network. Authentication doesn't change the fact that your email can be intercepted through the network in which it has been sent or received.

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#26

Post by icebraining »

maratd wrote: post #21
rayiner wrote: post #3

This statement: "Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy 'generally no privacy' in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications" is entirely consistent with the existence of Warshack. Warshack covers the Sixth Circuit, which includes the following states: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The IRS is bound by this precedent in those…

> If you understand how SMTP works, it's hard to argue that it's a private means of communication. You send a clear-text message to a publically-accessible service that is empowered to forward the message to other publically-accessible servers if necessary. Whoa, hold it, I don't think so. Almost every SMTP server out there today requires authentication and quite a few require either SSL or TLS. That is the very defi…

You're talking about the server client connections, right? Between servers, SMTP is still often unencrypted and even when they use SSL, I doubt they authenticate each other.

Of course, if you send an email to an account with the same provider, it's probably secure.

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#27

Post by mimiflynn »

alexanderh wrote: post #12
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail has SSL to Google's e-mail server. If you e.g. send a mail to someone using Outlook, it's sent in clear text. And at both ends it's scanned to deliver everyone involved targeted advertising. "Reasonable expectation of privacy" doesn't have an implicit "only as against the government." If you're knowingly exposing the contents to Google and Microsoft to scan, you can't claim to have a "reasonable expectation of…

And this is why you always use something along the lines of PGP end to end.

PGP needs to be more easily accessed by non-tech folk.

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#28

Post by sp332 »

Jach wrote: post #15

When will "does not give the option to encrypt all outgoing correspondence with my PGP public key" become as embarrassing for an important website as "doesn't have an SSL cert" or "emails/stores passwords in plaintext"? Edit: added word "outgoing" for pedant below. ;) Of course it'd be nice to get their public key too if you had to correspond back without going through say their https website.

If you want to send someone a message, you have to use their public key. If a message is encrypted with your public key, it can only be decrypted by your own private key.

Edit: ok your edit makes more sense now :)

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#29

Post by betterunix »

maratd wrote: post #21
rayiner wrote: post #3

This statement: "Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy 'generally no privacy' in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications" is entirely consistent with the existence of Warshack. Warshack covers the Sixth Circuit, which includes the following states: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The IRS is bound by this precedent in those…

> If you understand how SMTP works, it's hard to argue that it's a private means of communication. You send a clear-text message to a publically-accessible service that is empowered to forward the message to other publically-accessible servers if necessary. Whoa, hold it, I don't think so. Almost every SMTP server out there today requires authentication and quite a few require either SSL or TLS. That is the very defi…

Except that the mail server gets to see the body of the email, which is not even remotely private. Encryption gives you privacy; instead of politely asking people to not read your mail, why not politely ask people to encrypt messages?

Re: IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

#30

Post by __david__ »

disposition2 wrote: post #16
rayiner wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EFF has a good page on the principles underlying "reasonable expectation of privacy." See: https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/privacy . The crux of the matter is "knowing exposure to third parties." So you have an expectation of privacy in sealed postal mail, but not say post cards or anything printed on the outside of envelopes. While a postal service as a matter of course can't read what's in peoples' seale…

So would an attachment to an email (say a zipset of text files) fall under the category of reasonable expectation of privacy?

Is that attachment encrypted?
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