[Discuss] Data including email, stored in the cloud, may be available to law enforcement without search warrant

[Bill Horne]

On 11/3/2011 8:47 AM, scottmarydavidsam at gmail.com wrote:
> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/ecpa-turns-twenty-five/
>
> Paraphrasing the article:
>
> According to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the law still
> considers data that has been left on cloud servers for longer than six
> months to be "abandoned.".
>
> Law enforcement officers will continue to have access to citizens' stored
> communications that are more than six months old without a warrant as long
> as they assert that the content is relevant to a criminal investigation.
> The law also allows law enforcement to access all files stored in the cloud
> for longer than six months without a warrant, even though cloud storage
> services, like Dropbox, did not exist in 1986.
>
> A federal appeals court last year ruled that email stored in the cloud for
> longer than six months still requires a warrant for access, but the ruling
> applies only to Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

This is a problem that can be easily solved by using end-to-end 
encryption. The capability is already built-in to every common email 
client.

Bill, who encrypts all his email to prevent the FBI from finding out how 
boring his life is.

-- 
Bill Horne
774-219-7638 (cell)
339-364-8487 (office)