Obama Wants to Read Your Email and Track Your Location

[Tjol]

Apathy, it's a great thing when it's convenient....

and a terrible thing when it isn't.

<Rock the Vote or some other cliche...>

[Orlion]

(Yahoo and Google believe that going through your personal e-mails for information is something that only they should be able to do, and if anyone else wants that information, they should pay them. They are protecting their business model, not championing a right to privacy.)

True, but it does have the added benefit (in this case) that it helps protect my private matters from the government. Now, if only it would protect my private matters from Pfizer....

[Avatar]

(Yahoo and Google believe that going through your personal e-mails for information is something that only they should be able to do, and if anyone else wants that information, they should pay them. They are protecting their business model, not championing a right to privacy.)

They might well be, but then all the government would have to do is pay them. Nah, like I said, I have other issues with Google, (SkyNet anybody? ), but I don't care about them spidering my mail, as long as they don't keep or share what they "find." (Cause they don't really find anything...nobody reads it, it's just scanned for keywords to trigger the ads.)

--A

[Vraith]

At the moment, I don't see enough info about what exactly they're looking for, why they're looking for it, what basis they are using to filter who to look at, or when it all started and who authorized it...all those things are necessary to know. BUT if this is a Presidential/significant DoJ boss policy, and it's new [not a sudden revelation of something continuing on a bureaucratic 'this is procedure' since the Patriot Act] I will be just as angry with Obama as I was with Bush...at least on this issue.

OTOH...if you think your email is in any way private [without taking security steps that are mostly illegal in the US unless you are a bank or defense contractor] you are deluding yourself on a massive scale.

[Ur Dead]

I believe this is old news. It just revives by the opposition of the sitting President.

This stuff is supposed have have been going on since Clinton. Bush was acused of it.

I believe the software was called Carnivore.

But it may have been true for years now.

[Cybrweez]

I have to admit its pretty funny wayfriend responded w/being annoyed about a thread starting w/an alarmist post, and feeling the need to defend it.

In my mind, big deal, another example Obama isn't different than anyone else. Did someone still need to learn that? Even the socialists recognize Obama is just like all the politicians before him.

[wayfriend]

I have to admit its pretty funny wayfriend responded w/being annoyed about a thread starting w/an alarmist post, and feeling the need to defend it.

I could have SWORE I was annoyed about people complaining about the lack of a response to an alarmist post.

But you know me: I just don't enjoy rewriting the past to make myself look funny. Peculiar, I am.

[High Lord Tolkien]

ASSUME YOU, ZARATHUSTRA, DO NOT KNOW WHAT I MEAN, EVER EVER.

What Wayfriend is trying to say is that only Z doesn't know what WF is saying.
Everyone else can make accurate summations of WF's points of view.

Spoiler

private dig at WF for doing the exact same thing to me recently

By the way the DoJ just dropped the case.
Freedom wins.

[wayfriend]

Note the bold and italics... The justice dept is looking for a loophole to view emails that are less than 181 days old by saying they previously opend email are NOT in 'electronic storage' and thus dont qualify under the 181 day requirement.

Fair point.

BTW, the 2703(d) law which is in question allows the DoJ "to obtain the full contents of a subscriber’s account except unopened email and voicemail that have been in the account for 180 days or less." [link]

Unless I am mistaken, and other things aside, the DoJ can obtain opened email and voicemail without waiting 180 days, according the extant law, provided that the link is accurate.

Should the DoJ proceed within the bounds of the law, and get denounced for it? Or should it hamstring itself when the political winds blow, and blow weakly for that matter?

I'm not sure which is more reassuring. You need to look at it without a predisposition for the case at hand. (And, sorry, this isn't in the same league as secret illegal warrantless wiretapping.)

But if this is offending your sense of privacy...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears likely to rule against public employees who claimed a local government violated their privacy by reading text messages they sent on their employers' account.

Lengthier versions of the story explain how the employees were first told by their supervisors that they could use the accounts for private messages if they paid the charges, and that they private messages would remain private. Then the employer searched their accounts, found naughty messages, rescinded their promise that the messages would be private, and then held the employees accountable for misuse.

The application of that case to this one is clear: your reasonable assumption of privacy can be rescinded retroactively at any time by Yahoo, Google, etc.

[Blackhawk]

the email reading is bad enough but wouldnt your entire Net Surfing history fall under the same rules? and not only that but we are going to be paying them to do it.. how many employees will be needed to take on a job this large? does this mean new Government jobs will be opening or are they just going to put it in the lap of someone already doing 2 jobs because of all around Layoffs?

between the random checking of citizenship, wiretappign and digging through our mail, whats the next step? teaching kids the Goose step in Physical education?

[Zarathustra]

Unless I am mistaken, and other things aside, the DoJ can obtain opened email and voicemail without waiting 180 days, according the extant law, provided that the link is accurate.

Exactly what is/is not legal isn't really what disturbs me here (although it's bad that this loophole exists). It's the government reading our emails without a warrant, that bothers me. Lots of things are (or have been) legal that shouldn't have been. Until recently, it was okay for minors to dance naked on a stage in [some mid-western state, forgot which]. It was a law intended to protect freedom of speech by protecting public nudity as long as it was performance art at a theater. Unfortunately, the law was too vague to stop live child "porn."

Similarly, this law has a loophole. I'm not sure what's magically Constitutional about 180 days, but private communication should be protected from warrantless eavesdropping by the government regardless of how many days it has been in storage. As far as I know, there is no "statute of limitations" on Constitutional rights.

Should the DoJ proceed within the bounds of the law, and get denounced for it? Or should it hamstring itself when the political winds blow, and blow weakly for that matter?

What is "political" about the government reading our email? Since when did that become a Re-pu-blican issue? Aren't most De-moc-rats against it, too?

(And, sorry, this isn't in the same league as secret illegal warrantless wiretapping.)

How is it not in the same league? Merely because it's technically "legal" because of a poorly writtern law? I'm sure you realize that laws can be unconstitutional. Which is why we have judges to decide the issue. Which is probably why the DoJ dropped the case. If they were in the right, if they were acting "competantly," then why not keep fighting? It's not like they're spending their own money fighting it.

But if this is offending your sense of privacy...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears likely to rule against public employees who claimed a local government violated their privacy by reading text messages they sent on their employers' account.

You seriously think people should have an expectation of privacy when they send text messages on their employers' account, and their employer just happens to be the government? Are you allowed to surf porn at work? I've never worked at a job where the things I did on employer computers was considered private.

Lengthier versions of the story explain how the employees were first told by their supervisors that they could use the accounts for private messages if they paid the charges, and that they private messages would remain private. Then the employer searched their accounts, found naughty messages, rescinded their promise that the messages would be private, and then held the employees accountable for misuse.

Well, the employees have a good argument that they were misled in the first place, but they don't have a good case that their privacy was violated. Sounds like they were simply dumbasses for believing that electronic communication on government accounts would ever remain private.

The application of that case to this one is clear: your reasonable assumption of privacy can be rescinded retroactively at any time by Yahoo, Google, etc.

How is that clear at all? The government is not Yahoo or Google; therefore none of its actions can reasonably be applied to Yahoo or Google. Yahoo and Google were FIGHTING the government over the right to keep our emails secret! Why would they spend the money fighting if they didn't consider the privacy of their customers important?? (Yes, I know "important" means "profitable," but the point remains.)

[wayfriend]

Should the DoJ proceed within the bounds of the law, and get denounced for it? Or should it hamstring itself when the political winds blow, and blow weakly for that matter?

What is "political" about the government reading our email? Since when did that become a Re-pu-blican issue? Aren't most De-moc-rats against it, too?

Nothing, except a demonstration of misapplying a phrase to the text it modifies.

What is political is the DoJ dropping the case because of the political response to its actions. (If that is what happened.)

If this had happened in a different case, for a different political wind, would no one have an issue with the DoJ dropping its prosecution?

I would. I can seperate the privacy issue from the issue with the DoJ acting politically. Just because in this case I agree with the politics doesn't mean that I like the DoJ's bending to it. (And if I did any less I would be a hypocrit, wouldn't I?)

How is it not in the same league? Merely because it's technically "legal" because of a poorly writtern law?

Yes, that is exactly why.

Because, again, I am seperating the issue of the way the DoJ behaves with the issue of privacy.

As far as the way the DoJ behaves, it makes all the difference if they proscecute to the fullest extent of the law, or if they exceed the law and commit crimes, or if they stop short of the fullest extent of the law and lose a case that they could have won.

As far as the privacy laws are concerned, reading emails is as much an invasion as wiretapping. But the DoJ didn't make the law, and it would be inadvisable to blame them for the issues of privacy.

Which is probably why the DoJ dropped the case.

Says you.

How is that clear at all? The government is not Yahoo or Google; therefore none of its actions can reasonably be applied to Yahoo or Google.

Ah, well, then I shall explain for you.

The core of the issue is the rights of the owner of the equipment vs the rights to privacy of the people who use but do not own the equipment.

In this case, the owner is the employer, and the user is the employee, but the rights in question don't arise from being an employer or being an employee, but from being the owner and from being a non-owning user. (To wit, if the employee owned the pager and the paging contract, the employer would not have the right to review the personal pages that were made.)

The users in this case paid for the privilege of using the equipment for personal use, and had an agreement to that effect as well.

Yet their privacy was still invaded because the rights of the owner to inspect the data were declared to trump the user's rights to privacy and the agreement as well.

Now, as Google and Yahoo own all the servers their users' email sits on, I think the results of the supreme court case bear on this quite importantly. Sure, users have an agreement with Google and Yahoo. Sure, they may have paid for it (although the cost may be zero dollars). But the supreme court could rule that the owners rights trump this agreement and trumps your right to privacy.

This would also apply to phone companies storing your voice mail, internet providers providing web space, etc. etc. As we move into the age of cloud computing, we will all of us have data on equipment we don't own.

Not to mention the fact that the employer, in this case, doesn't even own the computers the pages are stored on! They just own (or rent) the devices that the pages pass through!

Therefore, any form of communication that passes through something you don't own could be at risk from being unprivate.

[Avatar]

By that reasoning, no email is private, because it has to pass through our ISP to get to us.

I am, of course, vehemently opposed to anything that compromises my privacy. The fact that the law may cover it is completely beside the point as far as I'm concerned.

--A

[Avatar]

Google Comes Clean

San Francisco - Google Inc has set up a new tool to show where it's facing the most government pressure to censor material and turn over personal information about its users.

The country-by-country breakdown released on Tuesday on Google's website marks the first time that the internet search leader has provided such a detailed look at the censorship and data requests that it gets from regulators, courts and other government agencies.

The figures, for the roughly 100 countries in which it operates, cover the final half of 2009 and will be updated every six months.

Google posted the numbers nearly a month after it began redirecting search requests to its China-based service. Those requests are now handled in Hong Kong rather than mainland China so Google wouldn't have to obey the country's internet censorship laws.

Google said details about the censorship demands it got while in mainland China still aren't being shared because the information is classified as a state secret.

Extensive disclosures

In other countries, Google is making more extensive disclosures about censorship demands or other government requests to edit its search results.

Google is also including demands to remove material from its other services, including the YouTube video site, although it is excluding removal requests related to allegations of copyright infringement, a recurring problem for YouTube.

Google is showing how often it honoured those requests and spelling out which of its services were targeted.

In the US, for instance, it received 123 requests to remove material from its services during the last half of 2009 and complied with 80% of them. Reasons include violations of Google's own policies regarding extreme violence, profanity and hate speech. More than 40 of those requests included a court order, Google said.

Google is providing a more limited snapshot of government requests for its users' personal information. The numbers are confined primarily to demands made as part of criminal cases, leaving out civil matters such as divorces. And Google isn't revealing how often it co-operated with those data demands.

The disclosure comes as more regulators and consumers watchdogs around the world are complaining that the company doesn't take people's privacy seriously enough. Google maintains that its users' privacy is one of the company's highest priorities.

The company also notes that, in one instance, it has gone to court to prevent the US Justice Department from getting broad lists of people's search requests.

Standards

Brazil's government peppered Google with the most requests during the six-month period covered. The company says that's largely because it operates a social network called Orkut.

That service has attracted millions of users in Brazil and generates more taunting, derogatory language and other inflammatory material likely to trigger government requests and violate its own standards.

Google received 3 663 requests for user data and 291 requests to remove material from Brazil. Nearly 200 of the removal requests involved Orkut.

Other countries logging at least 1 000 requests for user data were the US (3,580), UK (1 166) and India (1 061).

After Brazil, the most requests to edit material came from Germany, at 188. The country has laws that restrict the online display of content connected to the Nazi regime. India was next with 142 requests mostly tied to Orkut, followed by the US, where the demands focused on YouTube.

And here's the link to their Government Requests map: www.google.com/governmentrequests/

--A

[aliantha]

By that reasoning, no email is private, because it has to pass through our ISP to get to us.

That is precisely correct. This is why you should never send something like a credit card number via e-mail -- it's not a secure medium.

And yes, your employer owns your e-mail, just like they own the work computer upon which you do your web-surfing when you're supposed to be working (not that anybody here would ever do that, er, um, ). This is why people get fired for viewing porn at work -- not only are they not doing their jobs, but they're using company equipment.

[wayfriend]

And every employer who knows his salt has a Fair Use Agreement which is made known to the employee. It says what equipment is theirs, what it can be used for, and what it can't be used for.

However,

In the supreme court case at hand, the non-owning users were told up front that their messages were private, and having paid their own money for the charges, had every reason to believe that they were private.

And, if SCOTUS goes the way I predict (5-4), that will have meant SQUAT.

Which means your agreement with google that google won't read your e-mail is, by precident, squat as well. In fact, I predict that there will be a surge in promises of privacy, once companies know they are essentially meaningless.

[Zarathustra]

If our privacy agreements mean "squat," then why is Google spending money defending them? That's the difference between these two examples. Google is going to court to defend our privacy from the government, while in the other case it's the government violating privacy. Actually, in both cases it's the government violating privacy. I don't see how that translates to some fear over Google. Government is the problem in both cases.

Because Google has to make a profit by customers trusting it--and the goverment does not--it has a completely different incentive to protect privacy than the government does.

Apples . . . oranges.

[Avatar]

Yeah, I'm with Z on this...Google is trying to defend our privacy. The reason they're doing it is quite probably to preserve their profit, (although I doubt it would have that much impact on it), but they're still doing it, and it's the outcome I care about.

(Oh, and while companies may own the email you send and store on your work computer, they have no rights over you gmail for example.)

--A