Raiding your inbox

Begin forwarded message:

From: Alice Kehoe <[email protected]>
Date: December 4, 2006 9:02:56 AM EST
To: [email protected]
Subject: Raiding your inbox

Dave: for IP, if you wish

from Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com

Raiding your inbox
The Bush administration's assault on privacy rights soon could reach  
e-mail messages stored on the Web.
December 1, 2006

IN THE LATEST illustration of the Bush administration's disregard for  
your privacy, the Justice Department is trying to convince a panel of  
federal judges that the FBI should be free to read your e-mail  
without obtaining a warrant.

It's not all your e-mail — only messages left on a Web-based system  
such as Hotmail or on your Internet service provider's computers. A  
1986 law forbids the interception and disclosure of e-mail and other  
online transmissions without a warrant. But there is an exception. If  
the messages are more than 180 days old, they can be obtained merely  
with a subpoena or a court order, which investigators can obtain more  
easily than a warrant.

Now the Justice Department is arguing, in a case before an appeals  
court in Ohio, that even new messages can be obtained without a  
warrant if their intended recipient has already read them. The  
Justice Department views an opened e-mail left on a service  
provider's computer as more like a postcard left on a table than a  
sealed letter in a drawer. Which is to say, its owner has no  
reasonable expectation of privacy.
<snip>

  Complete Editorial at: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/ 
asection/la-ed-email01dec01,1,5868619.story?coll=la-news- 
a_section&ctrack=1&cset=true