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(visit the link for the full news article)Police Can Access Your Email Without A Warrant If It's 180 Days Old
When retired four-star general and former CIA Director David Petraeus resigned from his post this month after admitting to an extramarital affair, one of the more startling revelations was that the dalliance was discovered when the FBI sifted through his private Gmail account.
The spy chief had been out-spied.
More alarming is that the average American could easily be subjected to the same snooping that Petraeus endured. According to current law, police can access email through a provider, like Yahoo or Gmail, without a warrant if the message is more than 180 days old.
The rule is a relic of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, written before legislators could dream of the explosion of technology and ubiquity of email, text messaging, online chatting and other communications that leave behind an electronic trail.
Read more: www.businessinsider.com...
After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record.[1] This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that is needed for a government agency to force email providers such as Google's Gmail to produce a copy.[1] Other countries may even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries.
Emails are also governed by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and the Patriot Act. Although the ECPA originally set up protections (such as a warrant requirement) to protect email, those protections have been weakened in many instances by the Patriot Act. Even where the protections remain under the ECPA, emails lose their status as a protected communication in 180 days, which means a warrant is no longer necessary and your emails can be accessed by a simple subpoena.
Unlike your email at work, emailing from home is more likely to grant you a reasonable expectation of privacy, but even then, it's not very difficult for prying eyes to gain access to your emails. Because your emails are stored locally, at your ISP, and on the receiving end, there are multiple points that hackers or law enforcement can gain access to. While it may be difficult for law enforcement to legally gain access to your home computer and local copies of your emails, it is substantially less difficult for them to get your ISP to turn over your emails.
ISPs are also increasingly creating End User Service Agreements that users must agree to abide by. These agreements reduce any expectation of privacy, and often include terms that grant the ISP the right to monitor your network traffic or turn over records at the request of a government agency.
Originally posted by hawkiye
reply to post by boncho
It doesn't matter its still unconstitutional your rights don't expire in 180 days you have to defend them and statutes are not law they are corporate policy. Its going to take a national movement of people defending their rights to get these bastards to respect them.
Oh, and get used to the terms "Cyberthreat", "Cyberwar", "Cyberterrorism", and "Cybersecurity" - these are just a few of the Newspeak buzzwords for our consumption. because the new reality is that Cyberspace is considered to be real territory that is under attack. Therefore the reality is, we are speaking to one another in a recognized war zone - where military law will trump civilian law each and every time the Government needs it to.
Originally posted by boncho
Police Can Access Your Email Without A Warrant If It's 180 Days Old
www.businessinsider.com
(visit the link for the full news article)Police Can Access Your Email Without A Warrant If It's 180 Days Old
When retired four-star general and former CIA Director David Petraeus resigned from his post this month after admitting to an extramarital affair, one of the more startling revelations was that the dalliance was discovered when the FBI sifted through his private Gmail account.
The spy chief had been out-spied.
Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
"OMG; They're reading my e-mai!": How the media inflames privacy panic
Yahoo, Feds Battle Over E-Mail Privacy!
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