Privacy: should the government have access to personal emails?

[mandy]

How safe is stored e-mail from the prying eyes of government authorities? Not very. It would be a whole lot safer if a decision by a federal judge in Ohio were left standing, according to a trio of civil rights groups.

The decision by District Court Judge Susan J. Dlott declared unconstitutional provisions in a statute that allow law enforcement authorities access to stored e-mail without a search warrant or prior notice.

That ruling in Warshak v. United States has been appealed by the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ).

The rights groups -- the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio -- believe the decision should be left standing and on Wednesday they filed with the appeals panel a "friends of the court" brief saying so...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/neUyeme9...ails.xhtml

[BellisimaJ.]

"The premise of the statute is that when I have information that I put in the hands of a third party -- whether it's a bank or an ISP (Internet Service Provider) or whatever -- I've lost all expectation of privacy," she told TechNewsWorld. "I don't think that's true."

If the ruling by District Court Judge Susan J. Dlott is not upheld, the federal government will have taken one step further to eliminating our right to privacy of any kind.

The right of the government to demand stored emails from an individual's ISP should be predicated on the assumption that this would require a warrant for probable cause. Emails are privileged communications, no different than phone conversations, etc.

This ruling may well be overturned and our expectations of privacy in email communications obliterated with little fanfare-----------many will not even hear of it.