We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email • Hacker News Board

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#11

Post by 616c » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:48 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #8

panarky wrote: post #6

Relevant excerpts: Microsoft believes you own emails stored in the cloud, and that they have the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail... The U.S. government can obtain emails only subject to the full legal protections of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment... A search warrant cannot reach beyond U.S. shores... [The US government] argues that your emails become the business records of a cloud provider…

> your emails become the business records of a cloud provider That is simply ridiculous. Email stored by a cloud provider isn't a business record of the provider any more than the contents of a physical letter stored in a rented mail box is a business record of the box provider.

And soon they will argue that your mail is not your mail, and subject to legal protection, when it is in any USPS facility because it is government assets until it touches your mailbox.

Granted, they already track all metadata without opening it (if you believe that). This is attrocious. I come from a family of attorneys and I have told them I lost all respect for the system in which they operate, and Jeffersonian calls to refresh the tree of liberty have started to seem very real and urgent these days.

In short, fuck these animals. I hope they choke.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#12

Post by higherpurpose » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:50 PM UTC

If Microsoft was serious about this, they'd also offer end-to-end encryption for their e-mails (open source protocol, otherwise they shouldn't bother).

But because they aren't doing this, it just shows they are more concerned about not losing business overseas than "fighting for your e-mail".

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#13

Post by higherpurpose » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:51 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #6

Relevant excerpts: Microsoft believes you own emails stored in the cloud, and that they have the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail... The U.S. government can obtain emails only subject to the full legal protections of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment... A search warrant cannot reach beyond U.S. shores... [The US government] argues that your emails become the business records of a cloud provider…

> Microsoft believes you own emails stored in the cloud, and that they have the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail

But do they, really?

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26677607

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#14

Post by diafygi » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 4:53 PM UTC

So where is the line on the governments position?

If you use AWS, is all the data (S3, EC2 filesystems, RDS data+backups, etc.) now a business record of Amazon?

What about renting dedicated servers at your local datacenter? You're basically renting bare hardware at that point, but the hard drives are still technically owned by the datacenter. Is the data on those hard drives business records of the datacenter?

Not being able separate the owner of the hardware and the owner of the data on the hardware seems like it would have a ton of modern consequences.

EDIT: Here's a fun thought experiment. Say I bought a license to analyze some music dataset from a record label. That license requires that can't share the music data with anyone. When I upload the dataset to S3 to run my Elastic Map Reduce script on it, did I just violate my license because that data is now a business record of Amazon?

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#15

Post by fooqux » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 5:03 PM UTC

higherpurpose wrote: post #12

If Microsoft was serious about this, they'd also offer end-to-end encryption for their e-mails (open source protocol, otherwise they shouldn't bother). But because they aren't doing this, it just shows they are more concerned about not losing business overseas than "fighting for your e-mail".

I'm no longer sure that is enough. Considering what happened to Lavabit, just offering end-to-end encryption is only going to work until the government decides they want what you have hidden. I doubt that Microsoft will put up as much of a fight, or take the high road out, like the Lavabit founder did.

Fighting them on the legal front to stop such practices from starting may well be the best option right now. Even though Microsoft may be doing this for business reasons, it'll still help everyone.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#16

Post by hubtree » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

SchizoDuckie wrote: post #5

thinkling wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link didn't get me to the full text of the article, but searching for the headline on Google gets me through.

FUCKING annoying. Apparently they check the referer header. Mandatory link for lazy people: https://www.google.com/?q=We%27re+Fighting+the+Feds+Over+You... (forget about "i'm feeling lucky", that doesnt work, hit search.)

thanks

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#17

Post by rayiner » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #8

panarky wrote: post #6

Relevant excerpts: Microsoft believes you own emails stored in the cloud, and that they have the same privacy protection as paper letters sent by mail... The U.S. government can obtain emails only subject to the full legal protections of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment... A search warrant cannot reach beyond U.S. shores... [The US government] argues that your emails become the business records of a cloud provider…

> your emails become the business records of a cloud provider That is simply ridiculous. Email stored by a cloud provider isn't a business record of the provider any more than the contents of a physical letter stored in a rented mail box is a business record of the box provider.

A physical letter in a rented mailbox is also generally not data-mined for the commercial purposes of the service provider.

I think cloud companies essentially want the 4th amendment benefits of treating the cloud like real world private areas (e.g. bank lock boxes), without any of the obligations that come along with that.

The "reasonable expectation of privacy" in things like safe deposit boxes or storage units is based on the actual fact that service providers generally do not and cannot access the contents of those rented spaces. To apply that same reasoning to data stored in the cloud, we have to indulge in the fiction that various bots and sysops cannot in fact access that data, and do not routinely do so.

That said, I think the cloud folks are ultimately going to win, on the basis of Riley v. California (which is noted in Brad Smith's op-ed). I think Riley is technologically ignorant in glossing over technical distinctions between local and cloud storage that are relevant to privacy, but it all but says the cloud is protected under the 4th amendment. I don't know what's left to fight over.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#18

Post by josefresco » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 5:15 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #10

codazoda wrote: post #4

Paywall? I'm out.

You might want to reconsider posting comments like that. You may think you're making a principled stand against the evils of paywalls (aside: how do you expect online publications to stay in business?) but in fact all you're doing is advertising the fact that you're either too lazy or too stupid to take the trivial steps required to get around one.

"too lazy or too stupid to take the trivial steps required to get around one"

Or maybe he just doesn't want to? You know, on principle? Even skirting the paywall, you're boosting the WSJ's viewership stats which in turn, helps them sell more advertising/contributes to their "value".

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#19

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 5:15 PM UTC

diafygi wrote: post #14

So where is the line on the governments position? If you use AWS, is all the data (S3, EC2 filesystems, RDS data+backups, etc.) now a business record of Amazon? What about renting dedicated servers at your local datacenter? You're basically renting bare hardware at that point, but the hard drives are still technically owned by the datacenter. Is the data on those hard drives business records of the datacenter? Not be…

[deleted]

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#20

Post by niels_olson » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #17

lisper wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your emails become the business records of a cloud provider That is simply ridiculous. Email stored by a cloud provider isn't a business record of the provider any more than the contents of a physical letter stored in a rented mail box is a business record of the box provider.

A physical letter in a rented mailbox is also generally not data-mined for the commercial purposes of the service provider. I think cloud companies essentially want the 4th amendment benefits of treating the cloud like real world private areas (e.g. bank lock boxes), without any of the obligations that come along with that. The "reasonable expectation of privacy" in things like safe deposit boxes or storage units is…

Gmail is not the only cloud. Does Apple datamine icloud.com or me.com emails? The fact that the email may exist on multiple servers around the world (aka, cloud) doesn't per se mean the company is abusing the customer's trust.