DOJ: We don't need warrants for e-mail, Facebook chats

Re:DOJ: We don't need warrants for e-mail, Facebook chats by glesica on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @12:54PM (#5675310)

You share your telephone conversations with the phone company, so why did they need permission to set up a wiretap in the past? You shared your personal and business possessions with your housekeeper, janitor, plumber and other maintenance staff, so why do they need a search warrant for your home or office? It's not a logical argument, it's a ludicrous argument that sounds logical because the Internet has only existed for most people for 15 years or so and social norms are still being worked out.

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Re:DOJ: We don't need warrants for e-mail, Facebook chats by mpyne on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @02:00PM (#5675767)

The government needs a search warrant, not your housekeeper. If your housekeeper then tells the government of your "crimes" that's whistleblowing, not government invasion of your privacy.

As for the telephone conversations, read this thread a bit more... the government didn't need permission to wiretap until a specific law was passed in 1934 that required it.

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Re:DOJ: We don't need warrants for e-mail, Facebook chats by pyre on Thursday May 09, 2013 @12:26AM (#5678821)

This is more akin to a safety deposit box. The bank doesn't necessarily know what's in there. It's not the same as compelling testimony from a housekeeper.

Sure, Facebook/Google have more access than a bank has to the safety deposit box, but the likelihood that anyone at Google or Facebook has actual knowledge of the information the government is looking for is slim to none.

Maybe a better analogy would be a warehouse. Just because things are stored in the warehouse, and employees have access, doesn't mean that the employees have rifled through them.

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Re:DOJ: We don't need warrants for e-mail, Facebook chats by glesica on Thursday May 09, 2013 @12:43AM (#5678878)

I'm really not that interested in what the law says. The law often says horrible, stupid things. I was criticizing the OP's assertion that the policy "made sense". It does not make sense unless you also believe that it is acceptable for the government to snoop into your life through other means, using situations in which you have trusted a third party against you.

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Re:DOJ: We don't need warrants for e-mail, Facebook chats by mpyne on Thursday May 09, 2013 @10:48AM (#5680687)

Well that's just it, the reason that the previous laws were passed to increase privacy controls was in response to the realization that the law as it stood at the time permitted those privacy violations that people found unacceptable.

The law should conform to what's best for society but you need to understand where the law is not best for society before you can understand where to change it.

The whole reason OP gave that the DOJ policy "makes sense" is because there's not actually 4th Amendment protection for this case. And he's right, so don't shoot the messenger, he's telling you what needs to be fixed in order to restore privacy controls closer to what we envision as ideal.

And that is important because a government that can affect things around the world does not run on "expectation", it runs on the law. You can complain until you're blue in the face about how the government is violating your expectation of privacy.... or you can fix the law, as was done in 1934, 1968, 1986, and many more times in between.

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