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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

#81

Post by sliverstorm »

kamjam wrote: post #67
sliverstorm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authentication is to prevent someone from pretending to be you. This is not the same as trying to keep your messages private.

The lock on my door is to prevent someone from pretending to be me to enter my property. This is not the same as trying to keep my stuff private or safe. Note how your statement does not hold in the real world.

We are talking about a transmission protocol, not a storage protocol. For storage, privacy and identity overlap. For transmission they do not.

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

#82

Post by rsync »

r00fus wrote: post #56
linschn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, this is a good point. History suggests that the government of france should absolutely be afraid of french citizens.

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

#83

Post by nateabele »

sliverstorm wrote: post #31
maratd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Authentication is to prevent someone from pretending to be you. This is not the same as trying to keep your messages private.

You can easily demonstrate the veracity of your statement by letting us all know what publicly-accessible server we can access to read your email, without using violence and coercion (for which 'government power' is a euphemism) against a service provider to circumvent your 'authentication'.

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

#84

Post by GauntletWizard »

rayiner wrote: post #68
kamjam wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lock on my door is to prevent someone from pretending to be me to enter my property. This is not the same as trying to keep my stuff private or safe. Note how your statement does not hold in the real world.

Except Google's servers and whatnot are not your property. The lock keeps other Google customers from accessing "your stuff" not Google itself.

The mailbox in the foyer of your building and whatnot are not your property. The lock keeps other tenants from accessing "your stuff" and not your landlord himself.

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

#85

Post by kyrias »

kunai wrote: post #53
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.

Your SMTP server requires it to send email to prove it's really you and really them, yes, the mail server however sends your email to the recipient in clear text and can easily be intercepted if you happen to be inbetween the two servers.

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

#86

Post by theorique »

betterunix wrote: post #42
taeric wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would not argue against encryption giving you privacy, I think it is easy to argue that there is an expectation of privacy in sending emails. At least, as much of one as if you were sending actual correspondence. Consider, in a public restroom there is very little done to prevent people from seeing each other. However, one almost certainly has a reasonable expectation of privacy in such a situation. Hell, con…

We put doors on restrooms. Claiming that unencrypted email should carry a legitimate expectation of privacy is like claiming that people should expect privacy when they go to the bathroom on the side of the highway. People may want their email to be private, but that does not mean that we should pretend that email really is private. Really, we need encryption to be widely used, for people to learn about it in school,…

We have not really won this fight until people encrypt private messages and get angry when private things are sent in the clear.

If this is the criterion for success, this fight will take a very, very long time to win. It may be impossible.

How will I explain this to my grandma?

To my 10 year old cousin who is interested only in Nicki Minaj and makeup?

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

#87

Post by rsync »

johngalt wrote: post #73

The problem with email privacy: it's trivial to copy/forward email, but hard to ensure every endpoint is secure. Even if you are running your own MX in your basement, all of your email recipients use Gmail.

Your communication to users on the same server, however, is secure since it isn't actually email - it is just a local copy operation.

Every single rsync.net intra-company "email" has never crossed a wire - always just a local copy operation.

Yes, we do all use (al)pine over SSH, so no, it didn't cross a wire to a web browser.

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

#88

Post by sliverstorm »

nateabele wrote: post #83
sliverstorm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authentication is to prevent someone from pretending to be you. This is not the same as trying to keep your messages private.

You can easily demonstrate the veracity of your statement by letting us all know what publicly-accessible server we can access to read your email, without using violence and coercion (for which 'government power' is a euphemism) against a service provider to circumvent your 'authentication'.

I think you are making the same mistake as some other people in this chain. We are talking about SMTP, not IMAP. You don't need violence or coercion to sniff unencrypted mail in-flight.

To prove to yourself that SMTP is primarily concerned about authenticity over privacy, just try setting up your own mail server. Ensuring your mail is not blocked and/or marked as spam is an involved process of establishing multiple checkpoints re-confirming your identity. DKIM, SPF, domainkeys- each intended to establish that you sent this (unencrypted) message, and not someone pretending to be you.

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

#89

Post by shmerl »

hpguy wrote: post #78
rayiner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Google's servers and whatnot are not your property. The lock keeps other Google customers from accessing "your stuff" not Google itself.

The data I put in Google is MY property, I want that data protected and don't care less about servers just as I do not claim ownership to the school locker.

The only way to ensure your data protection never changed - encryption. Google or not Google notwithstanding.

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

#90

Post by rayiner »

hpguy wrote: post #78
rayiner wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Google's servers and whatnot are not your property. The lock keeps other Google customers from accessing "your stuff" not Google itself.

The data I put in Google is MY property, I want that data protected and don't care less about servers just as I do not claim ownership to the school locker.

If you want it protected, don't leave it in clear text in the custody of someone else who may or may not choose to hand it over to the authorities without your permission.

In other news: you can't invoke the 4th amendment if you stash boxes of weed at a friend's house and he hands them over to the government when asked.

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