Edward Snowden and his reveals have been discussed here before, but I don’t think I’ve seen a thread specifically talking about the July 31st revelations about XKeyscore, one of the most comprehensive spying programs unveiled to date. With this tool used in combination with the vast database they’ve been gathering, the NSA has the capability to search through people’s email, internet activity, Facebook chats, etc at a moment’s notice. Note that the NSA is legally restricted from searching American targets communicating with other Americans, but any communications involving foreigners seem to be pretty much fair game.
However, the data has still been gathered, and is literally a few keystrokes away from the hands of NSA employees and contractors (which supposedly number 850,000, though I’m not sure how many have access to this program).
Regardless of whatever congressional or presidential authorization has been given (I’m not familiar with the details of how much this is covered by things like the Patriot Act), I’m of the opinion that this is a clear breach of the 4th Amendment. They’ve seized tremendous amounts of data wholesale with no warrant, and we only have fairly flimsy promises that they won’t actually look at the data they’re not supposed to. There may be some technicality that calls internet data public, but the spirit of the clause preventing unreasonable search and seizure would surely include things like private emails. To think that this capability won’t be abused is incredibly naive, and it’s only a matter of time before this information is used to selectively target political or social opponents of whoever is in possession of this data.
Email is not private, or hasn’t been so far. Perhaps a court ruling may come out of this mess.
At the current time, email is legally as private as a conversation in a park or coffee shop. IOW: not private.
Edit to add: What do I think? I think it sucks.
But it sure seems like they tried to keep it legal, in a just barely kind of way.
And succeeded.
I agree that email is akin to having an open conversation in public.
That being said, if you want to use encrypted email services and such, that should be perfectly acceptable and the US Government should have no ability to force or coerce private companies to give up data.
Agreed. But then NSA is legally free to hack away at your encrypted-but-public email, yes?
(Warrant should be required to request info from private companies. OTOH, “can we get a list of who calls whom?” might be something a company doesn’t mind doing. The records are there, it’s just a matter of downloading a report. Phone companies really don’t want terrorist using their networks, it’s bad PR.)
Other than the fact that it’s easier to do without the sender/receiver finding out, why is it acceptable to open and look at other people’s e-mails but not regular mail? Or is sending snail mail public too?
Paper mail in the USA is protected by a long history of privacy under the law.
A letter delivered through the Postal Service would be subject to Fourth Amendment protection, Search and Seizure.
Also privacy considerations. Although they photograph the outsides of mail, so that may annul any Freedom of Association privilege.
But email has no protection, it’s as public as anything.
So - no problem with the Government opening and copying any mail you send by a private company then.
Unless a government has a specific reason to be interested in anyone’s specific communications they should be covered by a reasonable expectation of privacy. I cannot understand how supposedly ‘liberty loving, constitution revering, fearing no-one but God’ Americans can be okay with giving the State carte blanche to monitor your activities and communications on a world-wide scale.
‘Land of The Free and The Home of The Brave’ my arse.
To expand on this, as far as I can tell with internet searches, it’s not a federal offense to open a package delivered by UPS, FedEx, or other private mail carrier.
There are people here in this thread saying people who use email have ‘no reasonable expectation of privacy’ and therefore by direct implication that emails do not have 4th amendment protection.
Which is also what Google is currently arguin in the class action case.
I maintain that (I’m using wiki here) that Katz vs The USA established ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ 4th amendment protection so I ask again - why - just because the technology exists to read my emails and govts want to do it - I don’t have this reasonable expectation of privacy.
I have exactly the same ‘reasonable expectation’ as when using snail mail that the govt won’t open and read it just because they can and just because they want to.
Email is the new technology equivalent of mail and people have every right to expect privacy subject to the same probable cause.
It comes down to what’s a reasonable expectation, and the courts (so far) haven’t found in favor of email privacy.
It’s a really new thing, there hasn’t been time to work out all the issues.
Email is not at all like paper mail. It’s more like a package sent with a private company like UPS. (Which has NO privacy protection)
Can I have a cite (not being snarky here) that mail sent through private companies can be opened by the government at will without violating the 4th amendment?
Or are people hiding behind the claim that getting private companies to search your data and then passing it on to the govt circumvents the 4th?
Which brings me back to my unutterable contempt that we in the West are letting the State use ‘terrorism’ as an excuse to trample all over our liberties.
And yes, I define the ability to communicate with others without the State reading it, as one of the defining liberties. The State has no business with knowing any aspect of my life unless and until it has a resonable suspicion. At which point it can get a warrant.
Monitoring the whole world on the basis of ‘preventing terrorism’ is a crock. It’s just the sort of thing the 4th was put there for.
But the law as it stands seems to allow wholesale spying on every last human, except for reading their snail mail and physically entering their homes.
The law here needs to change, and/or the courts need to start interpreting the 4th correctly.
It just goes to prove that “legal” and “right” are completely orthogonal to each other. The legal system hasn’t got a damn thing to do with how people should act.
UPS Terms of Service is my cite. They say they will open any package for any reason. Read it before sending packages. (I didn’t say ‘government’ in my first post)
E-mail isn’t really private, on a technical level.
When you send an email, it passes through anywhere from a few to a dozen (or more) different servers, in its entirety. Any one of those servers is not only able to read the complete contents of the email, it must do so, to perform its duties.
Sending an e-mail isn’t like sending a physical letter, it’s like sending a postcard. Everyone in the delivery process will read it, if they want to or not. There’s certainly room to make a case that such communication can’t be reasonably expected to be private.