IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by Domenic_S » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:24 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #36

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…

> 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. This is how postal system works.

Uhh...

In the postal system, your message is generally encapsulated in a tamper-evident envelope, carried in locked cars and trucks that enjoy Federal protection against intrusion, and end up in mailboxes that are almost always on private property and/or locked.

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

#52

Post by lutze » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:26 PM UTC

trent_91 wrote: post #24

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.

It wouldn't surprise me if various enforcement agencies viewed encryption as sufficiently suspicious behaviour to arrest/investigate you for some kind of "terrorism" charge anyway.

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

#53

Post by kunai » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:29 PM UTC

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…

All three of my email accounts (Outlook.com, Gmail, and AOL) require SSL, TLS, and STARTTLS (or any combination of the previous three) to send.

SMTP is nothing next to encryption, but it's not the equivalent of leaving papers in a filing cabinet.

Not even close.

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

#54

Post by 3825 » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #48

SudoNick wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you asked your attorney why he adds that warning, and asked whether attorney-client privilege is waived if email messages and documents are exchanged over an SMTP system which allows the messages to be read by providers and intermediaries? I asked once. The answer was: no, it is not waived and no warning need be attached. Applicable law revolves around intent and that is largely determined by who you choose for…

The law of client/attorney privilege and the Constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable search have distinct bases and are governed by different law. Attorney/client communication focuses on the whole communication, while 4th amendment focuses on the specific piece of evidence. So if you for example gave your client some advice relayed through your secretaries, you could invoke the privilege if they were questi…

What if I FedEx a letter and a FedEx employee opens it and keeps a copy of it? (Replace FedEx with USPS if it makes a difference)

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

#55

Post by declan » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #23

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.

But Google and Facebook are not the only two companies that store users' electronic messages (it's not just email, remember, but also direct messages, stored IM chats, etc.)...

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

#56

Post by r00fus » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:44 PM UTC

linschn wrote: post #19

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…

By contrast, in France for example, secrecy of correspondence is the default. It has been explicitely extended in 2004 to e-mail, but the law as it was after a change in 1988 certainly already covered that. Tampering with e-mail is thus punished the same way as tampering with a physical letter. Being an agent of the government constitutes aggravating circumstances. Circumventing those protections requires the interve…

Note to citizens of the USA: This is what you get when a government is afraid of it's citizens. Freedom fries, indeed. Guns not needed.

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

#57

Post by nmcfarl » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:45 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #40

Spooky23 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by your reasoning, if I mail you a postcard, and you put the postcard in a locked container placed inside of the trunk of a rental car, it is OK for the police to bypass your access controls and read the postcard? How you transmitted or handled something at a point in time is not relevant to it's status at rest. This issue here is that the government asserts that email is a communications system only. The problem…

Your analogy is completely inapt: 1) A rental car, like a rented house, is still under your control. But your e-mail account on Google's servers is under their control. They can do whatever they want with it. It's more like your friend letting you use part of his garage to store stuff--a third party still retains full control over the space. 2) As far as I can tell, Google can access your e-mail whenever it wants, so…

The interesting thing to me here is that the IRS is not claiming Google/Microsoft, it is claiming all email. Including that which is served by private servers that goes to other recipients on the same private servers.

The fact that you own the box that email was delivered to and that email never left that box has no bearing in the matter for the IRS. They still claim the right to inspect it, without a warrant.

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

#58

Post by rayiner » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:45 PM UTC

3825 wrote: post #54

rayiner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law of client/attorney privilege and the Constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable search have distinct bases and are governed by different law. Attorney/client communication focuses on the whole communication, while 4th amendment focuses on the specific piece of evidence. So if you for example gave your client some advice relayed through your secretaries, you could invoke the privilege if they were questi…

What if I FedEx a letter and a FedEx employee opens it and keeps a copy of it? (Replace FedEx with USPS if it makes a difference)

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to private carriers like FedEx or UPS. The expectation of privacy only extends to First Class USPS mail, under the consideration that extra protections are needed given that the USPS is an organ of the federal government and that USPS workers are bound by the 4th amendment just as any other agent of the government (and unlike private mail carriers!)

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

#59

Post by brigade » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:51 PM UTC

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…

No, that's stupid. That's equivalent to claiming telephone calls aren't private, because they're transmitted in the clear by third party exchanges accessible to authorized users. (email servers generally aren't publicly accessible, rather they're only accessible to authorized (registered) users)

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

#60

Post by overdrivetg » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 6:57 PM UTC

declan wrote: post #55

unreal37 wrote: post #23

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.

But Google and Facebook are not the only two companies that store users' electronic messages (it's not just email, remember, but also direct messages, stored IM chats, etc.)...

Also don't forget about Carnivore/Echelon and their ilk that presumably have the ability to intercept and store basically all email. Then once your email is duplicated in a government database somewhere, it being primarily housed on a Google or FB server is irrelevant.