Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on foreign servers

Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by Spivak on Thursday February 23, 2017 @01:03PM (#13716094)

Self-hosted would absolutely fare better in this situation. It's not perfect, but at least you would know you're being investigated. This whole mess is predicated on the fact the government is allowed to request your data from Google without much fanfare because they are technically in possession of it. The DOJ was able to successfully argue that user emails are actually business documents owned by the email provider.

This breaks down when the person they are investigating is also the email provider.

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by sfifs on Thursday February 23, 2017 @01:59PM (#13716658)

> It's not perfect, but at least you would know you're being investigated.

And this basically is the reason multi national companies self host email servers

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by Navarr on Thursday February 23, 2017 @01:06PM (#13716124)

You'd have to own the server too, at that point.

If you were a VPS or even a dedicated lease, or shared - I think the fed would be able to pull the same thing.

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by megous on Thursday February 23, 2017 @02:01PM (#13716671)

Not necessarily. You can use POP3. If you pickup often they would find precisely nothing.

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by donald123 on Thursday February 23, 2017 @01:19PM (#13716257)

Doesn't matter if you encrypt your emails, since you have control of your server. Let the fed have the encrypted data.

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by fixermark on Thursday February 23, 2017 @01:48PM (#13716552)

... at which point you might get to rot in jail for contempt until you fork over the decryption key.

I don't have a convenient link to the xkcd comic right now that talks about the difference between theoretical and practical security. ;)

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by Roujo on Thursday February 23, 2017 @01:55PM (#13716621)

To quote Spivak higher up in the comment chain:

> It's not perfect, but at least you would know you're being investigated.

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by donald123 on Thursday February 23, 2017 @02:01PM (#13716678)

Am I gonna be jailed for refusing to decrypt my files?

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by fixermark on Thursday February 23, 2017 @02:31PM (#13716933)

IANAL, but my understanding of current American law is that if the material is deemed by a judge to be evidence, and you can decrypt it, and you won't decrypt it, you can be held in contempt of court.

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by donald123 on Thursday February 23, 2017 @03:00PM (#13717201)

So they have to prove the evidence is in my emails first, and then prove my emails are on my "self-hosted" server. And I will have full control of my own data.

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Re:Court rules search warrant applies to US emails stored on... by fixermark on Thursday February 23, 2017 @03:32PM (#13717479)

That's not how contempt works.

If the prosecution asserts you have evidence material to the case that you would be legally required to render and won't render it, and the judge believes you probably do, that's it; they don't have to prove the evidence is in your emails to search for the evidence in your emails. Fail to render up the emails or render them up in an intentionally-obfuscated form, and they can hold you in contempt at pretty much the judge's discretion (your mileage may vary depending on severity of crime and state law, where applicable).

(Personal observation: people of a technical bent seem, for whatever reason, to underestimate the wide swath of power the legal process has in investigating a murder case).

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