Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Email rights oooops

A federal appeals court on Monday issued a landmark decision (.pdf) that holds that e-mail has similar constitutional privacy protections as telephone communications, meaning that federal investigators who search and seize emails without obtaining probable cause warrants will now have to do so.


Oooops turns out the feds do need a warrant after all and cant just turn up to any old ISP and do a massive download (well they can and still will but at least now they can be sent to jail for doing so).


Is it just me or does the USA seems to be coming back to normal? respecting constitutional rights etc

Must be an election around the corner...... isn't that what illegally seized regimes do - seize power and steal all the gold but just before an election introduce populist initiatives and then issue governmental pardons as they flee the country before being voted out?


Cheers,
Dean
P.S. Just came across this well written article http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070619-appeals-court-feds-cant-seize-secretly-seize-e-mail-without-a-warrant.html with more explanation.

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