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In a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. Closely tracking arguments made by EFF in its amicus brief, the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.
This is huge, folks. Until today, all law enforcement agencies needed was a rubber-stamped court order to be able to snoop on your email. This action was clearly unconstitutional, per the 4th Amendment. Today, the Constitution of the United States of America was upheld, and no more unreasonable searches on our email will occur. If authorities want to snoop on your email, they had better have a valid reason, and they had better damn well get a warrant.
What surprises me here is that I found this on a blog, and the mainstream media is not running with it. This is huge news, but I do understand that there are bigger stories out there for the major news outlets, such as Angelina Jolie's latest escapades, which Hollywood star is using which drug, who is going in for rehab, who is getting divorced, who is winning on Dancing With the Stars, who is having sex with who, and other events that our media whores feel are more important in our lives than mundane questions on Constitutional issues that affect us all on a daily basis.
Article is here.
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