[governance] Federal Judge Says E-mail Not Protected By 4th Amendment

[Jeffrey A. Williams]

All,

  As an perhaps important FYI...  FWIW this seems to be a rather shocking
rueling even given the narrowness of same as most users use third party
providers and as such their Email is therefore not protected under the
forth amendment in the opinion of this judge.  I personally believe
he is mistaken on the grounds that a user of such a service has or
should have a reasonable expectation of PII in the use of their
account.  This goes directly to governance concerns and perhaps
others would care to share their opinions???

See:

In the case In re United States, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_W._Mosman
Judge Mosman ruled that there is http://volokh.com/2009/10/28/district-judge-concludes-e-mail-not-protected-by-fourth-amendment/no constitutional requirement of 
notice to the account holder because the Fourth Amendment does not apply 
to e-mails under the third-party doctrine. 'When a person uses the Internet, 
the user's actions are no longer in his or her physical home; in fact he or
she is not truly acting in private space at all. The user is generally
accessing the Internet with a network account and computer storage owned
by an ISP like Comcast or NetZero. All materials stored online, whether
they are e-mails or remotely stored documents, are physically stored on
servers owned by an ISP. When we send an e-mail or instant message from
the comfort of our own homes to a friend across town the message travels
from our computer to computers owned by a third party, the ISP, before
being delivered to the intended recipient. Thus 'private' information is
actually being held by third-party private companies."" Updated 2:50 GMT
by timothy: Orin Kerr, on whose blog post of yesterday this story was
founded, has issued an http://volokh.com/2009/10/29/opinion-on-fourth-amendment-and-e-mail/important correction. He writes, at the above-linked Volokh Conspiracy, "In the 
course of re-reading the opinion to post it, I recognized that I was 
misreading a key part of the opinion.  As I read it now, Judge Mosman 
does not conclude that e-mails are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. 
Rather, he assumes for the sake of argument that the e-mails are protected 
(see bottom of page 12), but then concludes that the third party context 
negates an argument for Fourth Amendment notice to the subscribers."

Regards,

Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 294k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very
often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability
depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
===============================================================
Updated 1/26/04
CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of
Information Network Eng.  INEG. INC.
ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1 at ix.netcom.com
Phone: 214-244-4827

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance