Judges OK warrantless monitoring of Web use

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves.

... In Friday's ruling, the court said computer users should know that they lose privacy protections with e-mail and Web site addresses when they are communicated to the company whose equipment carries the messages.

... Expert evidence in Alba's case showed that the Web addresses obtained by federal agents included page numbers that allowed the agents to determine what someone read online, Crowley said.

Read more: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/07/BAGMNQSJDA1.DTL&tsp=1

[jimshoes]

1. Somebody should tell that

to karl rove and the rest of the RNC and white house lackeys.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

20. no, that doesn't apply to them, only everyone else.

You see, there are rules, and there are rules. And the rules that apply to you and me, given the erosion of our rights and privacy, don't apply to the administration because the administration has a veneer of confidentiality and the need to be protected from terra-ist eyes. Therefore, we are not entitled to information that everyone else has to give up.

Easy, no?

[19jet54]

29. You just don't get it...

... Karl & company are trusted loyalist, we are just scum sucking subversive liberals :sarcasm:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

36. damn. caught me.

here's to all scum sucking subversive socialist, liberals.

[DBoon]

40. You need to read up on your Leon Strauss

Laws are a noble myth designed to keep the masses under the control of the elites.

There is no need for the elites to obey the same laws.

[jimshoes]

44. And we are not even allowed to know

who visited the shooter's office as he had all his visitor logs destroyed. This is transparent government? Oh and fuck Leo Strauss, I'll piss on his grave one of these days.

[merwin]

2. Every citizen needs to start using SSL tunnels and encrypt

all of their e-mails.

Can't be too safe around these bastards.

[Prophet 451]

22. PGP encryption too n/t

[Igel]

26. That wouldn't help in this case.

It's not the content of messages that the court said could be monitored--that's akin to phone tapping, and presumably that still requires a warrant in criminal cases.

No, it's the e-mail addresses and URLs. Encrypt the contents all you like, but if you encrypt the e-mail address the context will never get where you want it to go.

[DBoon]

41. They can still compromise the server as well

and there are other attacks that the US government could take to reveal traffic

[merwin]

45. That's why I said use SSH tunnels for all of your traffic :)

That way they can't find out what the e-mail addresses are either. Also, never use your ISP's e-mail.

[peacetalksforall]

3. Living in the USSR was a piece of cake compared to us. nt

[MrPrax]

4. So what don't they need a warrant for now?

Monitoring a suspect or monitoring an IP address they THINK is being used by the suspect...stuff like that is usually outlined in things called warrants that clears up such matters.

[Igel]

27. Monitoring the addresses and URLs.

Similarly, the FBI doesn't need a warrant to see what phone numbers you're calling.

They can't listen in or record (legally, at least) without a warrant, but checking up who you've called and who's called you is a different story. It's been that way for decades.

[me b zola]

39. And monitoring phone records w/o a warrent is an invasion of privacy too, imo

Phone records, along with ISPs are not public records, they are private. They should require a warrent to search those records.

[LiberalFighter]

5. I want a god damn tap put on these judges

I bet they are terrorists and sex predators

[TalkingDog]

7. ASKING FOR HELP HERE! Since it isn't illegal to monitor these things,

I suggest we figure out a way to do just that.

Any techo-geeks out there to tell us how to "tap" several Republican judges internet use?

When we find the inevitable kiddie porn or gay bondage cruisings of the thoroughly "straight" married judge and put it out there for public discourse (since it's legal to do so and all) then maybe they'll begin to see the problems.....

Askin' for a little help here.







My favorite Future Famous Dead Artist: KarenParker

[Duncan]

9. Damn Straight!

[EVDebs]

12. These three were the justices in the ACLU vs NSA case

Justices Alice M Batchelder, Ronald Lee Gilman, and Julia Smith Gibbons.

I wonder what will turn up ? BTW, the NSA's program used a 'vacuum cleaner' accumulation of database info on all of us, therefore we all had/have standing to sue. In addition, the 4th amendment required a warrant PRIOR TO the authorities enforcing anything. What were they trying to enforce here ? I have an almanac in my possession, I guess I'm on their list

FBI Warns of Potential Almanac Terror Link
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1576793

They've lost their minds. We don't have to cooperate with madmen. And women.

[mogster]

13. You'll need access to nodes

in the net structure. Besides, the legality counts only for them, meaning (big) government. We have a silimar legislation over here, set down in the EU Retention Directive:
http://www.iterapi.com/index.php?parse_news=single&cat=49&art=329

It's like Orwell ++

If you need to increase your net anonymity, you could start with Tor from the http://www.eff.org">Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):
http://tor.eff.org/overview.html.en

It hides your traces thru obfuscation of original ip address and route to server. But even so, it's difficult to say whether your personal info is 'safe'. The best thing would be to promote orgs like this and work politically to change the legislation.

(Look here Mike, it's not democracy when you don't trust your citizens. Don't lie to yourself)

[poverlay]

28. I'd like to second or third or whatever that request. Damn fine idea. n/t

[autorank]

10. While were at it, how about mandatory drug testing for them.

Can't have "JUI" - Judging Under the Influence...

But we do anyway. They're influenced by their crackpot judicial philosophies and legal logic
that only makes sense to them, rarely us.

Encryption is essential, tunnels, the whole nine yards. Of course, they have the keys now but
whatever gives you the privacy you deserve.

[LiberalFighter]

6. Does not find out the contents of particular website pages viewed?

Likewise, the court said, although the government learns what computer sites someone visited, "it does not find out the contents of the messages or the particular pages on the Web sites the person viewed."

Does it really matter what a person really views when they visit a website? When they have the capability to view it that is the same as reading the content of a letter or listening to a conversation even though they don't know specifically what they are viewing.

[haele]

8. Can't tell you how many times I've searched for legit equipment vendors and

got directed to a porn site from a supposedly legitimate link. Sometimes, it's a matter of a disgruntled former employee or business competitor. It's especially a pain when you're working at a government site and trying to find out info on existing older equipment - the reports you have to fill out to prove you weren't cruising for porn during work hours - oye.
Be careful searching anything with the terms "equipment", "interface", "tool", "input", "frequency", "rack" etc... I suspect medical terms have the same problem.

Haele

[MindPilot]

11. And the wonders that spyware and malware can do for the unaware

A recent client had adware which loaded links to porn sites as the top six items in any Google search he ran. Others will popup up ads for porn sites and one wrong click and you just hit dozens of porn sites.

And those are ones the made it though our very extensive corporate enterprise firewall! I shudder to think what the average home user encounters.

[TalkingDog]

14. I once found a pron site while looking up information on ministers (clergy) *lol*

I gotcha' "forgiveness" RIGHT HERE!!! Points toward central location on body.....




My favorite Future Famous Dead Artist: KarenParker

[jeff30997]

15. For me it was nuns !

I won't even tell you what kind of results I got.Gee!

[cui bono]

31. Well why else would one look up nuns on the internet?

;)

[SharonRB]

21. Take a look at what I found when I made a mistake going to

americablog.com and I typed americablogs.com.

[cui bono]

30. If they have the site's ip then they know the content.

So that's bs. It's giving them license to know what you're looking at. Like they're not going to look at the site, yeah sure. A for email content... I don't know about how that works.

[IndianaGreen]

16. For decades, Democrats have been putting Federalist Society members on the courts

Even President Clinton nominated beaucoup Federalist Society members to the federal courts. For decades, liberals have been too afraid to demand that liberal jurists and lawyers be made federal judges, so what we got here is an unbroken string of rightwingers of different flavours being put in federal courts.

[ShortnFiery]

19. Not totally us liberals fault for we have to fight both the political power elites and the M$M. n/t

[IndianaGreen]

25. Don't forget that the DLC and their politicians hate liberals

They want to turn the Democratic Party into a moderate Republican Party, the country club style party the GOP used to be before it was overrun by the religious wackos.

[cui bono]

33. But the Dems don't even try. By not even nominating a "liberal"

they dilute it down and change the standard. The liberals get seen as more extreme and the right becomes more the norm. The right has been very good and getting the "norm" moved way over to their side. And part of it is they go for the extreme and put it out there and we go for moderate.

[originalpckelly]

17. If they're going to do this, then there should be a Miranda-esque warning

telling people every time they use a service that it will hand over records without a warrant. It should be posted clearly and frequently enough to make sure people know.

[ShortnFiery]

18. Hey There! Hi There! Ho There! A warm welcome to Agents Mike and Mary!

:hi: :scared:

Now we all know that our boys and girls in CONGRESS can check (counterbalance) such egregiously Un-Constitutional rulings.

But the question is: Are they made of the right stuff to do their SWORN duty? :shrug:

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2005/11/29/wbSEDITION_narrowweb__300x405,0.jpg

[TechBear_Seattle]

23. And the move towards greater fascism proceeds apace n/t

[TankLV]

24. What part of "unreasonable searches and seisures" don't these REPUKE fuckwads understand?!

The constitution is simply and comcisely clear: NO SEARCHES WITHOUT A WARRANT!

When will we get a congress & court that will recognize this instead of the REPUKE ACTIVIST COURT LEGISLATING FROM THE BENCH!

[napi21]

32. Actually, I agree with the court on this one. Sending an email

or visiting a web page has no more privacy than sending someone a post card. I'm always amused by the people who post all kind of different info on a MySpace page, they are SHOCKED when their employer finds out about it, or use company email to send some silly message and are surprised to find out other people have read it!

[Truth2Tell]

34. There is a big difference

between information that you publicly post on a MySpace page and information contained in an email. It is not the least bit unreasonable to have an expectation of privacy when sending private messages. Posting on MySpace is intended to be public. Just because sending an email "has no more privacy" doesn't mean that it shouldn't.

This ruling is an abomination - your absurd and false dichotomy notwithstanding.

[napi21]

37. Well, I consider myself a realist, and I NEVER expect privacy

when I send an email or visit a web page. I never did! I wouldn't even say something on a phone conversation that I believed would cause me trouble. Cell phones are even WORSE as far as privacy is concerned.

Should those things be private? Maybe, but there's way too many links touched via the net and our phone system for me to ever trust them that much.

[Truth2Tell]

42. There's another big difference

between understanding that we don't actually HAVE the privacy we are entitled to at present - and your statement that you "agree with the court on this one". That means you don't think we SHOULD have our constitutionally guaranteed privacy rights. Big fat difference.

But I gotta hand it to ya, you've got a knack for false dichotomies. And I'm glad you're "always amused" when others are shocked by these things. At least someone finds it funny.

[Divine Discontent]

35. sorry...

I'm just nauseous.

www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <<--- top '08 items & antib*sh stickers!

[McCamy Taylor]

38. We should do a lottery, how long before someone goes to jail for the crime

of having a web address on his list that federal agents claim is a kiddie porn site? No proof offered that he actually looked at it or that he was even the one at the computer or that it had kiddie porn that day. Get some poor guy who can not afford an decent lawyer in front of a jury and you can convict him of anything. Hell, they got a jury to convict Georgia Thompson and she had a real lawyer.

Once they have even one conviction as a precedent, the next step, is for the Post Office to set up kiddie porn sites, start collecting addresses of everyone who visits, even for a second. Then the FBI can put those people on a blackmail list, force them to do whatever they want. Work undercover. Hell, they can rig the internet to redirect people to their damn kiddie porn site so that they can then create a record that the person they want to entrap visited it.

It is easier than catching real criminals, who are probably all paying the government protection money.

[Socal31]

43. Is this that new people?

The NSA has had carnivore/echelon for YEARS. In fact, this post might be flagged for using those words.

Edit: spelling