By The Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation told a federal court Monday that the government is violating the U.S. Constitution when it fails to notify people that it has accessed or examined their private communications stored by Internet providers in the cloud.
EFF is supporting Microsoft in its lawsuit challenging portions of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that allow the Department of Justice to serve a warrant on the company to get access to customers’ e-mails and other information stored on remote servers – without telling users their data is being searched or seized.
In a brief filed in Microsoft v. Department of Justice in U.S. District Court in Seattle, EFF, joined by Access Now, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and legal scholar Jennifer Granick, said Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by the government apply to all of our information – no matter what the format or where it’s located.
“Whether the government has a warrant to rifle through our mail, safety deposit boxes, or e-mails stored in the cloud, it must notify people about the searches,” said EFF senior staff attorney Lee Tien.
“When electronic searches are done in secret, we lose our right to challenge the legality of law enforcement invasions of privacy. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t allow that, and it’s time for the government to step up and respect the Constitution.”
Microsoft sued DOJ earlier this year challenging ECPA provisions enacted 30 years ago, long before the emergence of ubiquitous cloud computing that now plays a vital role in the storage of private communications.
The government has used the transition to cloud computing as an opening to conduct secret electronic investigations by serving search warrants on Internet service providers seeking users’ e-mails, the lawsuit says.
The government, which wants the case thrown out, doesn’t let account holders know their data is being accessed because of the unconstitutional ECPA provision, while service providers like Microsoft are gagged from telling customers about the searches.
“When people kept personal letters in a desk drawer at home, they knew if that information was about to be searched because the police had to knock on their door and show a warrant,” said EFF staff attorney Sophia Cope.
“The fact that today our private e-mails are kept on a server maintained by an Internet company doesn’t change the government’s obligations under the Fourth Amendment.
“The Constitution requires law enforcement to tell people they are the target of a search, which enables them to vindicate their rights and provides a free society with a crucial means of government accountability.”
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Previously:
* A Plea To Citizens, Websites: Fight The Expansion Of Government Powers To Break Into Users’ Computers.
* NSA Today: Archives Of Spy Agency’s Internal Newsletter Culled From Snowden Documents.
* U.S. Surveillance Court A Bigger Rubber Stamp Than Chicago City Council.
* Obama Won’t Tell Congress How Many Innocent Americans He’s Spying On.
* Ruling Unsealed: National Security Letters Upheld As Constitutional.
* EFF Sues For Secret Court Orders Requiring Tech Companies To Decrypt Users’ Communications.
* Trying (And Trying) To Get Records From The ‘Most Transparent Administration’ Ever.
* EFF Urges Appeals Court To Allow Wikimedia And Others To Fight NSA Surveillance.
* U.S. Government Reveals Breadth Of Requests For Internet Records.
* What’s The Evidence That Mass Surveillance Works? Not Much.
* Why The Close Collaboration Between The NSA And AT&T Matters.
* First Library To Support Anonymous Internet Browsing Effort Stops After DHS E-Mail.
* EFF Sues For Records About ‘Hemisphere’ Phone Call Collection And Drug Enforcement Program.
* Snowden Documentarian Laura Poitras Sues U.S. Government To Uncover Records After Years Of Airport Detentions And Searches.
* Obama Secretly Expanded NSA Spying To Internet.
* Court: NSA Phone Program Illegal.
* The Chicago Connection To The Hidden Intelligence Breakdowns Behind The Mumbai Attacks.
* Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection Of American’s Telephone Records.
* U.S. Secretly Tracked Billions Of Calls For Decades.
* Amnesty International Joins ACLU, Wikimedia In Lawsuit To Stop Mass Surveillance Program.
* Stop Spying On Wikipedia Users.
* EFF Wins Battle Over Secret Legal Opinions On Government Spying.
* The NSA’s “U.S. Corporate Partners.”
* I Fight Surveillance.
* Illegal Spying Below.
* Smith vs. Obama.
* EFF Sues NSA Over FOIA.
* Stand Against Spying.
* The NSA Revelations All In One Chart.
* U.S. Supreme Court Limits Cell Phone Searches.
* EFF To Court: There’s No Doubt The Government Destroyed NSA Spying Evidence.
* House Committee Puts NSA On Notice Over Encryption Standards.
* Which Tech Companies Help Protect You From Government Data Demands?
* Lawsuit Demands DOJ Release More Secret Surveillance Court Rulings.
* Human Rights Organizations To Foreign Ministers: Stop Spying On Us.
* What The Proposed NSA Reforms Wouldn’t Do.
* Technologists Turn On Obama.
* Dear Supreme Court: Set Limits On Cell Phone Searches.
* EFF Fights National Security Letter Demands On Behalf Of Telecom, Internet Company.
* Eighth-Grader Schools The NSA.
* You Know Who Else Collected Metadata? The Stasi.
* Today We Fight Back.
* The Day We Fight Back.
* FAQ: The NSA’s Angry Birds.
* Jon Stewart: The Old Hope-A-Dope.
* Four Blatantly False Claims Obama Has Made About NSA Surveillance.
* EFF To DOJ In Lawsuit: Stop Pretending Information Revealed About NSA Over Last Seven Months Is Still A Secret.
* Judge On NSA Case Cites 9/11 Report, But It Doesn’t Actually Support His Ruling.
* Edward Snowden’s Christmas Message.
* Jon Stewart: Obama Totally Lying About NSA Spying.
* Presidential Panel To NSA: Stop Undermining Encryption.
* The NSA Is Coming To Town.
* 60 Minutes We Can’t Get Back.
* Why Care About The NSA?
* NSA Surveillance Drives Writers To Self-Censor.
* Filed: 22 Firsthand Accounts Of How NSA Surveillance Chilled The Right To Association.
* Claim On ‘Attacks Thwarted’ By NSA Spreads Despite Lack Of Evidence.
* Obama Vs. The World.
* How A Telecom Helped The Government Spy On Me.
* UN Member States Asked To End Unchecked Surveillance.
* Government Standards Agency: Don’t Follow Our Encryption Guidelines Because NSA.
* Five More Organizations Join Lawsuit Against NSA.
* A Scandal Of Historic Proportions.
* Item: NSA Briefing.
* The Case Of The Missing NSA Blog Post.
* The NSA Is Out Of Control.
* Patriot Act Author Joins Lawsuit Against NSA.
* Obama’s Promises Disappear From Web.
* Why NSA Snooping Is A Bigger Deal In Germany.
* Item: Today’s NSA Briefing.
* NSA Briefing: It Just Got Worse (Again).
* Song of the Moment: Party at the NSA.
* It Not Only Can Happen Here, It Is Happening Here.
* What NSA Transparency Looks Like.
* America’s Lying About Spying: Worse Than You Think.
* Obama Continues To Lie His Ass Off About The NSA.
* The Surveillance Reforms Obama Supported Before He Was President.
* America’s Spying: Worse Than You Think.
* Has The U.S. Government Lied About Its Snooping? Let’s Go To The Videotape.
* Who Are We At War With? That’s Classified.
* Six Ways Congress May Reform NSA Snooping.
* NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own E-Mails.
* Does The NSA Tap That?
* Obama Explains The Difference Between His Spying And Bush’s Spying.
* FAQ: What You Need To Know About The NSA’s Surveillance Programs.
* NSA: Responding To This FOIA Would Help “Our Adversaries”.
* Fact-Check: The NSA And 9/11.
* The NSA’s Black Hole: 5 Things We Still Don’t Know About The Agency’s Snooping.
* Defenders Of NSA Surveillance Citing Chicago Case Omit Most Of Mumbai Plotter’s Story.
* Obama’s War On Truth And Transparency.
* ProPublica’s Guide To The Best Stories On The Growing Surveillance State.
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See also:
* Jimmy Carter: America’s Shameful Human Rights Record.
* James Goodale: Only Nixon Harmed A Free Press More.
* Daniel Ellsberg: Obama Has Committed Impeachable Offenses.
* Paul Steiger: Why Reporters In The U.S. Now Need Protection.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on September 6, 2016