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We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

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Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#81

Post by arebop »

rayiner wrote: post #80
watwut wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from regular mail? Any postman can open the mail, copy/read the content and then close envelope. It is maybe 5 minutes of work.

Its different because not only do mailmen not open mail as a matter of course, for advertising or operational purposes, its a felony to do so.

Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy for your bedroom or can the government freely search that too? Does your answer change after you hire a housekeeper (or housekeeping company) to dust your furniture and put away your socks?

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#82

Post by seanflyon »

rayiner wrote: post #30
rhino369 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A search warrant cannot reach beyond U.S. shores... Well, that is also part of this case. The court is going to determine how to fit data into the current caselaw. There is good reason for why the US can't order searches in another country. But if Microsoft has servers in the United States that can routinely access their cloud servers, there is a good argument that data is really in the United States as well. The bu…

The government's case here isn't a ridiculous one. I can't think of any other situation where there is 4th amendment protection of property in custody of a third party where the custodian has essentially unregulated and unrestricted access to the property and no consequences for loss or damage to the property. Its a really novel argument on the part of Microsoft to claim that your emails on their service are still yo…

If I rent my house to you, you have unregulated and unrestricted access to it. That does not mean that the government can, without either of us giving permission, search that house.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#83

Post by ak217 »

This is the same Microsoft that ran ads against Google based on the claim that unlike Google's ad algorithms, they don't look at your email, then turned around and looked at a user's email when they found out that a Microsoft employee sent confidential information to that account. (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-issues-mea-cul...).

It's also the same Microsoft that was found to have provided the greatest aid to the NSA in accommodating their mass wiretap requests (compared to Yahoo, Google, and other webmail providers).

The irony is delicious.

To put it very mildly, I question Microsoft's integrity and wouldn't trust them with my data. Want to showcase a hero who actually went to great lengths to fight the feds over your email? Try Ladar Levison.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#84

Post by count »

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…

So, with the US Govt. move to use commercial cloud providers (including Microsoft Office365!), does that then make all of the USG communications stored on that system 'business records' of the provider? That would completely destroy the whole cloud market for anything other than public data...

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#85

Post by rayiner »

seanflyon wrote: post #82
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government's case here isn't a ridiculous one. I can't think of any other situation where there is 4th amendment protection of property in custody of a third party where the custodian has essentially unregulated and unrestricted access to the property and no consequences for loss or damage to the property. Its a really novel argument on the part of Microsoft to claim that your emails on their service are still yo…

If I rent my house to you, you have unregulated and unrestricted access to it. That does not mean that the government can, without either of us giving permission, search that house.

If you rent your house to me, you no longer have unregulated and unrestricted access to it. You can only access it in certain circumstances defined by landlord-tenant law. That's what creates the expectation of privacy: you know your landlord will only enter your unit for emergencies or with adequate notice to you. You can sue them if they violate these requirements.

The difference with cloud hosting is that, unlike your landlord, your cloud host does have unregulated and unrestricted access to your cloud storage.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#86

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #80
watwut wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from regular mail? Any postman can open the mail, copy/read the content and then close envelope. It is maybe 5 minutes of work.

Its different because not only do mailmen not open mail as a matter of course, for advertising or operational purposes, its a felony to do so.

But, under the ECPA, it is not a felony for system operators to do the same thing (for operational and diagnostic reasons) on networks carrying voice traffic. And yet nobody is suggesting that voice traffic isn't subject to wiretap laws.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#87

Post by tptacek »

Squarel wrote: post #73
sophacles wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know the case law for services that filter a person's mail for them? E.G if I employ a service that will open mail for me to weed out the junk and send me the good stuff, do my letters become business records? What if I also employ them to (going a step further), pay any bills that come in from my bank account? I think that this line has already been drawn. Tangential question: since the Supreme Court rec…

I do not know how it works in the US, but in many countries, you can already opt out of receiving junk mail through your letterbox.

It does not work that way in the US, unfortunately.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#88

Post by seanflyon »

rayiner wrote: post #85
seanflyon wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I rent my house to you, you have unregulated and unrestricted access to it. That does not mean that the government can, without either of us giving permission, search that house.

If you rent your house to me, you no longer have unregulated and unrestricted access to it. You can only access it in certain circumstances defined by landlord-tenant law. That's what creates the expectation of privacy: you know your landlord will only enter your unit for emergencies or with adequate notice to you. You can sue them if they violate these requirements. The difference with cloud hosting is that, unlike…

In the analogy the customer is the landlord giving access to the could service. Giving someone access to your property does not automatically give the government the right to search it.

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#89

Post by ncallaway »

pappyo wrote: post #67
ncallaway wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it goes off the rails in step 2. Private organizations are not bound by the 4th amendment. For the most part, the constitution defines the powers and limitations of the federal government (and to some extent the state governments). The government is the entity bound by the 4th amendment, not private companies. I think a more likely scenario is that we end up with a court ruling that says something along the l…

>I think it goes off the rails in step 2. This went off the rails well before I started to write it. But let me push back on your thoughts. If I am understanding Microsoft's argument correctly for this court case, they are trying to equate e-mails to letters. And, by extension, equate themselves to UPS/USPS/FedEx whathaveyou. E-mails are private correspondence, just like letters in the post. And please, correct me if…

The fourth amendment doesn't protect you from other people reading your post. It probably _does_ protect you from the government reading your post (though, apparently not protect you from the NSA logging all your mail[1]).

It is a crime for other people to read your mail, though that protection comes from the legislative branch, not the constitution. Specifically, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 83, § 1702 [2]. If you could convince a judge that § 1702 applied to e-mail, you might be able to ruin Google's day. It'd be a very different legal argument than the fourth amendment legal claim. Whatever comes from Microsoft's legal arguments about the 4th amendment won't have a bearing on this line of argument.

I still think the best avenue for a conspiracy theory motive for Microsoft is to get a ruling that says "if the e-mail provider examines the communication for any purposes other than facilitating mail delivery, then the communication loses its 4A protections." That would allow other competitors to advertise strong 4A protections, and force Google to choose between that sweet, sweet personal data or also advertising 4A protections.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai...

[2] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1702

Re: We're Fighting the Feds Over Your Email

#90

Post by rayiner »

seanflyon wrote: post #88
rayiner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rent your house to me, you no longer have unregulated and unrestricted access to it. You can only access it in certain circumstances defined by landlord-tenant law. That's what creates the expectation of privacy: you know your landlord will only enter your unit for emergencies or with adequate notice to you. You can sue them if they violate these requirements. The difference with cloud hosting is that, unlike…

In the analogy the customer is the landlord giving access to the could service. Giving someone access to your property does not automatically give the government the right to search it.

Obviously Google is the landlord, since it owns the servers and you're just renting space on them to put your property.

In any case, your analogy doesn't work either way you phrase it. If you're the landlord, and Google is the tenant, then the government doesn't need your permission to access the property, just Google's. The government can't break in and search the servers, but it can get the documents with a valid subpoena duces tecum (subpoena for documents).

> Giving someone access to your property does not automatically give the government the right to search it.

No, but giving potentially hundreds of people you don't know and have never met access to your property does undercut any argument that you have an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy with regards to that property.

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