A Victory for Privacy

A recent court decision has granted e-mail the same 4th Amendment protection as your home and your phone calls.

From Bruce Schneier’s Blog:

This is a great piece of news in the U.S. For the first time, e-mail has been granted the same constitutional protections as telephone calls and personal papers: the police need a warrant to get at it. Now it’s only a circuit court decision — the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio — it’s pretty narrowly defined based on the attributes of the e-mail system, and it has a good chance of being overturned by the Supreme Court…but it’s still great news.

The way to think of the warrant system is as a security device. The police still have the ability to get access to e-mail in order to investigate a crime. But in order to prevent abuse, they have to convince a neutral third party — a judge — that accessing someone’s e-mail is necessary to investigate that crime. That judge, at least in theory, protects our interests.

We can only hope.

By Keith Survell

Geek, professional programmer, amateur photographer, crazy rabbit guy, only slightly obsessed with cute things.