RSSEmail privacy extended in the US
June 18th, 2007 by 
Adam
A recent ruling in a Federal Appeals Court in the United States has extended the rights of privacy to email. In short, the judge ruled that law enforcement agencies need warrants in order to gain access to a suspect’s emails.
The full story can be read at Wired.com, but I’ve summarised the main points in the quotes below:
“A federal appeals court on Monday issued a landmark decision that holds that e-mail has similar constitutional privacy protections as telephone communications, meaning that federal investigators who search and seize emails without obtaining probable cause warrants will now have to do so.”
“The case boiled down to a Fourth Amendment argument, in which Warshak contended that the government overstepped its constitutional reach when it demanded e-mail records from his internet service providers. Under the 1986 federal Stored Communications Act (SCA), the government has regularly obtained e-mail from third parties without getting warrants and without letting targets of an investigation know (ergo, no opportunity to contest).”
“The appellate court affirmed the lower court’s decision, agreeing that e-mail users have a reasonable expectation of privacy, regardless of how old their correspondence is and where it is stored.”
Below is a direct quote from the court’s ruling:
“In considering the factors for a preliminary injunction, the district court reasoned that e-mails held by an ISP were roughly analogous to sealed letters, in which the sender maintains an expectation of privacy. This privacy interest requires that law enforcement officials warrant, based on a showing of probable cause, as a prerequisite to a search of the e-mails.”
In terms of privacy for users and legislation for those who uphold the law, this decision is a major step forward in the US at least. It would be interesting to find out what implications this will have for international users operating their email services on American service providers - for example, Gmail, Hotmail etc. Will international law enforcement agencies need to produce warrants to gain access to the emails stored on servers in the US?
Posted in Privacy | 
June 20th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
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June 27th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
is this applies to the emails stored in the gmail servers outside the US?
June 27th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
I’m afraid that I don’t know specifically where this ruling would be applied - realistically, I think it’s still a fairly grey area. Consider the following:
Perhaps it applies only to the servers located in the US. The email of some American citizens may be stored outwith the US, meaning that their email privacy is not protected at all.
Perhaps it applies to US Companies - as you know, Gmail is owned by Google (an American company), and this may imply that all email kept on servers owned by Google are protected by this court ruling.
Alternatively, it may only apply to emails sent or accessed from IP addresses originating in the US. Consider that in this case, a user accesses their email from a holiday destination outwith the USA. Does this therefore mean that the emails they access are not protected by the ruling, but emails they don’t access are?
Unfortunately, with international boundaries becoming less important, these questions may not be easily answered and I unfortunately don’t have a definitive answer for you.