

Obama administration wanted warrantless access rights to most US email - miked
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002423-38.html

======
CWuestefeld
I can't help but notice the irony in the current top of the HN current story
page.

 _2\. Obama administration wants warrantless access rights to most US email
(cnet.com)

3\. Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being
sued (philly.com)_

It's pretty clear to me that even the most well-intentioned government powers
eventually wind up being used in the most sinister and disturbing ways.

Edit: for posterity, the other story is at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1270579>

~~~
protomyth
The webcam story blowing up is probably a good answer to roc's question about
"Why is this not enough?". If they find something that sends some rage into
the community, then I would expect this to bubble up again.

------
btilly
What is the real difference between this and what China was trying to do to
gmail? The government wants to get access to private emails of people they
don't like without having to demonstrate real evidence that the person has
done anything wrong.

The biggest difference to my eyes is that the one targets "human rights
activists who would like to bring down the government" while the other targets
"terrorists".

Yeah, yeah. There is the whole "we're just going to take the emails". However
China only went down that route after Western companies got leery of handing
emails over due to the negative publicity that was incurred when Yahoo did so
a few years back.

~~~
ErrantX
The difference is simple. This is being hashed out in a courtroom. And has a
high liklihood of not happening. :-)

~~~
roboneal
Good point. However, the similarity is also just as simple - the "instincts"
of our Federal government is not all that different than the Chinese Communist
government.

------
ytilibitapmoc
If only the silence meant that people were sharpening their pitchforks.
Unfortunately, this is the USA -- we would rather die by a thousand paper-cuts
than stand up and say "No!"...

~~~
yummyfajitas
Obama selected Joe "I wrote the Patriot Act" Biden as his VP. This is the same
Joe Biden who tried to ban Turing machines because they could be used to
encrypt files that the government would be unable to crack.

Plenty of people knew this, but voted for Obama anyway.

For many people, "the government is violating privacy rights" is not a genuine
policy position. It's just a club to beat their political opponents with.

~~~
lutorm
"Plenty of people knew this, but voted for Obama anyway."

In all fairness, given the range of options offered for American voters, I'd
also have gone with Obama even if I didn't agree on everything.

~~~
sophacles
This is not how US politcs works. If you agree with a side on some points and
disagree with others you are ostracized by all groups. It is stupid, but
unfortunately the US is a place where (for example) you are pro-death penalty
and anti-abortion or pro-abortion and anti-death penalty. If you are pro both
or anti both, almost everyone hates you.

~~~
cgranade
You almost had a point here, but your unfortunate choice of terms demonstrates
a lot of what's wrong with US politics. Rather than referring to the pro-
choice movement as such, you've adopted a label, pro-abortion, that is simply
misleading. Here we have a debate over women's reproductive health rights, and
it gets reduced to misleading soundbites like "pro-abortion."

In the same way, I think much of what is being protested in this thread comes
from the false dichotomy between "pro-security" and "anti-security" that
ignores how important the ideals of personal rights are to the debate. US
politics is well-characterized by a practiced reduction of complex political
issues to misleading soundbites.

------
eplanit
I'll echo the advice I heard from Phillip Zimmermann back in the early 1990s:
If everyone consistently used encryption for all their email (that's
'everyone', and 'all'), then the effectiveness of government access to email
would be lowered to a near-moot level. The sheer complexity and resource
requirements to decrypt _all_ email traffic would exceed the government's
capabilities. I know the NSA has incredible capabilities....but not that
incredible.

Yes, I know this creates a new moving target. However, that beats being a
sitting duck, though.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Only partly. It still leaves header information open, so the government is
still able to see who you talk to. Through traffic analysis they can see what
groups you're likely to sympathize with, even if they can't see the membership
roles. And they're able to tell when those groups are planning something, even
if they don't know what.

~~~
dantheman
Exactly, this is what the NSA wiretapping case was about. They weren't
listening in on all the calls, they were gathering information on who was
calling who and for how long. This is the most traditional wiretap because it
requires a lot less effort and provides a lot of information.

------
jdrock
_"For its part, the Justice Department has taken a legalistic approach: a
17-page brief it filed last month acknowledges that federal law requires
search warrants for messages in "electronic storage" that are less than 181
days old. But, Assistant U.S. Attorney Pegeen Rhyne writes in a government
brief, the Yahoo Mail messages don't meet that definition.

"Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage,'" Rhyne wrote in a
motion filed last month"_

Am I missing something here? How is web-based email not in electronic storage?
Where is it then?

~~~
btilly
Lawyers who don't understand technology are trying to convince a judge who
doesn't understand technology that technology works in impossible ways. News
at 11.

------
ackkchoo
Update from the bottom of the article: "the Obama administration withdrew its
request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail
accounts under investigation."

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002722-38.html?tag=mncol...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002722-38.html?tag=mncol;txt)

------
tptacek
First, this title editorializes the article, and summarizes it too
aggressively.

Second, while I agree that there's a problem here, the DOJ doesn't simply want
"warrantless access rights" to "most US email". What it's claiming is more
subtle: that mail that is older than a certain threshold and that has been
open requires only a _court order_ , and not a bona fide search warrant.

~~~
tc
You misread. They are claiming that mail older than 181 days _or_ mail that
has been opened falls under the lower standard.

Edit: To your main point, I think your emphasis on the fact there is still a
court order is misplaced. Of what practical value is a court order if there is
no burden to show _probable cause_ (instead only 'relevance to an ongoing
investigation'), and you have no opportunity to challenge (or even know about)
the order. How many requests under such a standard do you really think are
going to be turned down?

~~~
tptacek
You're right. Thanks! But, I wasn't moved to comment by the 181 day standard
or the "opened" standard, both of which are, excuse my bluntness, retarded.
The real issue I have is the fact that there's still a court order involved.

------
ErrantX
Wait. What do they need for emails older than 181 days? I wasn't actually
aware of that limit.

Slightly worrying.

------
nopassrecover
We were already taught at uni that the NSA gathers, scans and records (albeit
temporarily) all email that passes through US servers.

------
rmundo
I wonder if it's time we started pushing for encrypted email as a default.
Mail/Calendar/Documents hosted in encrypted form online, and can only be
decrypted on personal devices owned by users themselves. I really don't trust
any machines other than my own when it comes to entering passwords. Do you?

------
lkijuhyghjm
Does anybody seriously doubt that they don't already do this ?

~~~
r0s
I believe this was the reason for the telecom immunity sell-out:
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-02-27/bay-
area/17190307_1_ob...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-02-27/bay-
area/17190307_1_obama-s-justice-department-wiretap-program-immunity)

------
davidmurphy
I am extremely disappointed in the Obama Administration and outraged. This is
unacceptable and we as a society MUST push back and demand this be stopped.

------
stretchwithme
Obama and Bush are the same in so many ways.

------
korch
So it's probably time to pull all my email out of Gmail and onto my own email
server. At least the gov't hasn't yet routed around that basic personal
liberty and property right. Surely many geeks will be moving away from
freemium webmail that's wide open to the gov't, but where will they be going?
Does anyone know of a good open-source Gmail front-end clone? If somehow this
doesn't exist, open-source developers unite, let's do this!

~~~
korch
It's also relevant to understand how we got here, a read a little history to
avoid repeating it. An oldie but goodie: The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce
Sterling <http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html>

The book is about the incident where the Feds first raised the legal issue of
reading anyone's email without a warrant, and in a way it became the war that
launched a thousand Internet legal advocacy organizations; which is where we
are right now.

