
Petraeus case shows FBI's authority to read email - stfu
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PETRAEUS_RESIGNS_EMAIL_PRIVACY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-11-12-17-33-37
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sethbannon
The most disturbing bit from the article:

"Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal authorities
need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor - not a judge - to
obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older."

~~~
rayiner
It's only disturbing because people think of e-mail as equivalent to the
letters in their desk rather than what it is: putting private information into
the hands of private third parties in cleartext. The ECPA actually gives you
an extra layer of protection--requiring a warrant for messages less than six
months old. Under the principles of the 4th amendment, you wouldn't even have
this much protection. In general, you have no privacy interest in information
you entrust to third parties. If your ISP turns over your e-mail just because
the FBI asked nicely, without the ECPA that'd just be between you and your
ISP.

I don't know why this surprises anyone. Prosecutors have broad powers to
subpoena information in the hands of third parties. 4th amendment doesn't even
apply.

~~~
magicalist
That's only if you accept the current "third party doctrine" interpretation of
the limits of the fourth amendment. There is nothing in the amendment itself
to limit its protections in the way that they have been, and, in fact, these
limits have not been enforced uniformly.

For instance, even though you make (or made) telephone calls in the clear over
a third party network, the government cannot tap your phone calls without a
warrant (and, in fact, protections were even expanded to tapping of public pay
phones to target specific people in Katz v. United States).

The third party doctrine must be dropped by the courts or protections for
things like email need to be made explicit by congress. However, the current
interpretations favored by courts _are not_ inherent to the fourth amendment.

Timothy B Lee does a great job blogging about this stuff on Ars Technica and
elsewhere. Here's a good starting point if anyone wants one:
<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080530/2014171272.shtml>

~~~
rayiner
In the legal sense, the third party doctrine is as inherent to the 4th
amendment as anything can be--it's the Supreme Court's binding interpretation
of the contours of the phrase "reasonable expectation of privacy."

In the practical sense, I strain to see how someone can have a reasonable
expectation of privacy in say their e-mail when Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc,
data-mine those communications in order to show targeted advertisements...

~~~
tolmasky
Regarding your practical sense argument:

I don't see how its strange at all to have an expectation of privacy _even if_
they data mine it -- seems like just a term in a contract to me. For example,
if you hire me to protect your valuable manuscripts in my more-secure safe,
but grant me in this agreement the exclusive privilege to read these documents
with an NDA attached -- would it then _obviously_ follow that I deserve no
privacy for those documents AT ALL because I handed them to a third party? Of
course not. Many people know and find acceptable that Amazon uses data about
your purchases to build suggestions for others -- those same people would
consider it _completely_ different to go around telling others what you
purchased (government or otherwise). I'm sure even you agree that the
expectation that GMail not publish all your emails in a blog post is
reasonable -- so the belief in needing a warrant to see them isn't _that_ much
of a stretch.

My point is not that this is the current legal interpretation -- I understand
its not. I'm simply pointing out that it is perfectly logically consistent
from the user's viewpoint to expect this. Furthermore, it seems like if I were
to go out of my way in our contract to specify the privacy of your email the
government would still think its fine to read it.

~~~
rayiner
Right, but that's a contractual expectation between you and say Google. It's
not a general expectation that something will remain private. E.g. I expect my
shrink not to tell people stuff, but I don't have a 4th amendment claim of he
tells the police that I said I'd kill someone.

------
adestefan
Petraeus signed all kinds of paperwork that said it was okay for the
government to go digging around in his personal life, including email. This is
really a non-story.

~~~
cypherpunks01
_As they looked further, the FBI agents came across a private Gmail account
that used an alias name. On further investigation, the account turned out to
be Petraeus's._

The FBI broke into the gmail account (or at least subpoenaed identifying
information from google) before they knew whose it was. So no, it's not a non-
story.

~~~
cma
Does Google actually require subpoenas?

~~~
Evbn
Yes, and Google fights them, and often wins.

------
lukejduncan
When you join the CIA you sign a piece of paper that says "You have the right
to access all of my personal accounts of any kind."

Having gone through the process of accepting a job offer from the CIA (which I
later declined due to the 2 year background check and a more fun job in the
Bay Area) I can say this is an oversimplification. If you work for the CIA you
explicitly agree to allow them to comb through any of your personal accounts
at any time.

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smutticus
So the head of the CIA can't think of a better way to securely communicate
with his lover than draft emails. He's the head of the nation's spy agency and
he's a terrible spy. Good riddance.

~~~
sliverstorm
Come now, the President of the United States is head of the nation's military.
He has no training as a soldier. Do you see where I'm going with this?

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ck2
Is everyone missing the fact the investigator who started this was corrupt?

As an FBI agent he had full email access, as easy as could be.

Gmail has a backdoor and it's what countries like China use for an attack
point.

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BlackNapoleon
Thing is...do I really think that in using Google they won't read my mail?

~~~
Evbn
You should, as Google has perhaps the best privacy record in the Internet
industry among remotely similar organizations.

~~~
duaneb
> You should, as Google has perhaps the best privacy record in the Internet
> industry among remotely similar organizations.

This means very little when Google still has to comply with subpoenas. They
don't really have much of a choice, pressed up against the law.

