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FBI rapped for reading emails

Snoops snoop too far
Tuesday, 19 June 2007, 11:10
THE FBI overstepped US constitutional bounds by searching stored e-mails without a warrant, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals found that e-mail users should be allowed a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Surveillance of e-mails when they are being transmitted is restricted under wiretapping laws, but the government believed that emails stored on an ISP server could be snatched without a warrant.

Not so, said the robed but not wigged ones. The three judges said that e-mail was an ever-increasing mode of private communication. Protecting shared communications through this medium is as important to Fourth Amendment principles today as protecting telephone conversations has been in past, the court ruled.

More here. ยต

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