You know the people we used to make fun of? The ones who insisted on PGP encryption for “See you at the bar around 8:30” emails? If we’re smart, we’ll be getting more like them, sooner than later. The LA Times helps us understand why:
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.
To be fair, law enforcement’s disregard for privacy isn’t unique to the present administration. But they’ve certainly taken it farther than any administration so far. And don’t count on Congress, Democrat-controlled or not, to roll it back. There are some folks dedicated to the good fight up there (Sen. Leahy, for the most part), but most politicians couldn’t give a damn about your privacy.