A Big Week for Email Privacy
A lot has already happened in the email privacy arena this week. To begin with, members of Congress are starting to make noise about the National Security Agency's interception of domestic emails, according to a
report in the New York Times.
A wiretapping law passed by Congress last year allows the NSA to intercept domestic emails as long as the interception was inadvertent and the byproduct of an investigation of individuals "reasonably believed" to be in a foreign country.
Some members of Congress have started to wonder whether the NSA has exploited the loophole in order to systematically read Americans' emails.
"Some actions are so flagrant that they can't be accidental," said
Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), Chairman of the House Select
Intelligence Oversight Panel.
The NSA claims that it has
difficulty distinguishing between emails that originate in the United
States and those that come from foreign companies.
Another
bit of news to come out this week concerns the 6th Circuit's rehearing
of a case involving emails the government definitely knew were
domestic. In 2005, the Justice Department was investigating
Steven
Warshak for mail fraud, money laundering and other offenses. They
obtained a subpoena ordering Warshak's ISP and Yahoo to turn over
electronic messages, but sealed the subpoenas so that Warshak didn't
find out about the release of his messages until much later.
Warshak
sued, and the district court held that the release of the records most
likely violated the constitution. A panel of the 6th Circuit agreed,
but the entire 6th Circuit overturned the decision en banc on procedural grounds.
Now the case is back before the 6th Circuit panel, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Ohio, and the Center for Democracy and Technology have submitted an amicus brief arguing
that "the government's seizure of email without a warrant violated the
Fourth Amendment and federal privacy statutes, as well as the Justice
Department's own surveillance manual."Kevin Bankston,
an EFF Senior Attorney, called the government's actions a "backdoor
wiretap," and urged Congress to update surveillance statutes to require
more reporting on government use of the surveillance power.
Finally
this week, Google announced - in response to an entreaty by concerned
computer scientists, law professors and online security experts - that
it will offer
beefed-up security for its Gmail webmail service.
Google
plans to implement Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS)
technology as a default option for the service. Gmail users can
currently turn on the HTTPS option, but it is disabled by default.
HTTPS protects emails while in transit, encrypting the contents and
keeping them away from prying eyes.
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