The Obama DOJ's warrantless demands for e-mails

A very significant case involving core privacy protections is now being litigated, where the Obama Justice Department is seeking to obtain from Yahoo "all emails" sent and received by multiple Yahoo email accounts, despite the fact that DOJ has never sought, let alone obtained, a search warrant, and despite there being no notice of any kind to the email account holders:

In a brief filed Tuesday afternoon, the coalition says a search warrant signed by a judge is necessary before the FBI or other police agencies can read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages -- a position that puts those companies directly at odds with the Obama administration.

As part of a case conducted largely under seal and thus hidden from public view, the DOJ demanded these emails from Yahoo without any effort to demonstrate probable cause to believe the email user was involved in the commission of any crime, but instead merely based on the vague claim that there is "reasonable grounds to believe" the emails "are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."

If the DOJ position were accepted, Americans would have substantially less privacy protections in their email communications.

www.salon.com...

Looks like even Google is backing Yahoo on this one. This is just another blatant attempt at the government refusing to follow the laws they created themselves.
And the increasing number of incidents that point to complete loss of freedom for citizens and protection from the government by law.

I agree that it is none of the gov business
whats in those emails. Its private stuff.

However, using the Patriot Act they wouldn't need
a warrant. So undoubtedly this is not of a Nat Sec
issue but a nose up ur arse issue.

It would be very time consuming work to show
probable cause to a judge of a large mass
of people and then they might gain more
charges for warrants if they leave them blank
and add charges as they go along.

Hope the Gov losses this case

This can't be true! Anyone who has perused the many "birther" threads on ATS knows that President Obama is a staunch supporter of personal privacy rights. Except for that immunity for warrantless wiretaps thing, and that telling you how to spend your own money thing, and that Habeus Corpus thing, and that torture thing, and that ...

Err, never mind.

This is the key right here:

The judge should "reject the government's attempted end-run around the Fourth Amendment and require it to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before searching and seizing e-mails without prior notice to the account holder," the coalition brief filed Tuesday says. The Bill of Rights' Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and, in general, has been interpreted to mean warrantless searches are unreasonable.

news.cnet.com...

I think the Department of 'Justice' is one of the worst purveyors of the global mafia network.

It is a lynchpin in their dirt.

If the Justice department got cleaned up & acting properly for ethical, righteous [constitutional] actions a lot of the other dirty dominos would begin to fall.

Okay Obama-bots, come out and support your president! You were quick to lambast Bush on the issue of warrantless wiretapping, so let's see how you explain away Obama's actions on this issue. How is this any different than warrantless wiretapping?

We're waiting for you to come and grease the wheel again. It's really getting squeaky.

[edit on 17-4-2010 by sos37]