---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: WWWhatsup <joly@punkcast.com>
Date: Jun 19, 2007 3:36 AM
Subject: [isoc-ny] EFF: Court Protects Email from Secret Government Searches
To: isoc-ny@yahoogroups.com, discuss@isoc-ny.org
Electronic
Frontier Foundation Media Release
For Immediate Release: Monday, June 18, 2007
Contact:
Kevin Bankston
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
bankston@eff.org
+1 415 436-9333 x126
Court Protects Email from Secret Government Searches
Landmark Ruling Gives Email Same Constitutional Protections
as Phone Calls
San Francisco - The government must have a search warrant
before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by
email service providers, according to a landmark ruling
Monday in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court
found that email users have the same reasonable expectation
of privacy in their stored email as they do in their
telephone calls -- the first circuit court ever to make
that finding.
Over the last 20 years, the government has routinely used
the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) to secretly
obtain stored email from email service providers without a
warrant. But today's ruling -- closely following the
reasoning in an amicus brief filed the by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other civil liberties groups
-- found that the SCA violates the Fourth Amendment.
"Email users expect that their Hotmail and Gmail inboxes
are just as private as their postal mail and
their
telephone calls," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston.
"The government tried to get around this common-sense
conclusion, but the Constitution applies online as well as
offline, as the court correctly found. That means that the
government can't secretly seize your emails without a
warrant."
Warshak v. United States was brought in the Southern
District of Ohio federal court by Steven Warshak to stop
the government's repeated secret searches and seizures of
his stored email using the SCA. The district court ruled
that the government cannot use the SCA to obtain stored
email without a warrant or prior notice to the email
account holder, but the government appealed that ruling to
the 6th Circuit. EFF served as an amicus in the case,
joined by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center
for Democracy & Technology. Law professors Susan Freiwald
and Patricia Bellia also submitted an amicus brief, and the
case was successfully argued at the 6th Circuit by
Warshak's counsel Martin Weinberg.
For the full ruling in Warshak v. United States:
http://eff.org/legal/cases/warshak_v_usa/ 6th_circuit_decision_upholding_injunction.pdf
For EFF's resources on the case, including its amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/warshak_v_usa/
For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2007_06.php#005321
About EFF
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most linked-to
websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/
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WWWhatsup NYC
http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
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