Justice Dept. to Congress: Don’t Saddle 4th Amendment on Us

[meegbear]

The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.

As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.

A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.

The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.

But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way.

<snip>

Don’t expect Congress to come out in favor of expanding Americans’ civil liberties in the post–Sept. 11 world. CNET reported that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said demanding warrants would be a burden to law enforcement in addition to “the court system.”

Congress has held countless hearings about reforming the Patriot Act, too. In the end, however, lawmakers have repeatedly punted on that issue, and we suspect they will embark on the same course when it comes to reforming EPCA.

The judiciary, however, has taken a different course. A federal appeals court in December ruled that e-mails were protected by the warrant requirement.

<snip>

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/fourth-amendment-email-2

[keopeli]

1. Avoid using cloud email. It's easy to do and costs about $20 a year.

Much cheaper than writing letters, which has it's own laws and loopholes. Not to mention efficiency...

[CantAffordBootstraps]

2. Love the Idea! Unfortuntely the Pat Act overrides our fredoms

Don’t expect Congress to come out in favor of expanding Americans’ civil liberties in the post–Sept. 11 world. CNET reported that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said demanding warrants would be a burden to law enforcement in addition to “the court system.”

What? What was with all that US constitution reading at the beginning of the session! Another bunch of crap. Hmmmm. another sign idea.