Kevin Bankston: In a landmark decision issued 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.
Jeremy Pelofsky: Officers will start random bag inspections on the sprawling Washington subway system, the Washington Metro Transit Police said on Thursday, a week after a man was arrested for making bomb threats to the rail system. Metrorail police officers plan to randomly select bags before passengers enter subway stations and they will swab them or have an explosives-sniffing dog check the bags, according to the Metro police. There is "no specific or credible threat to the system at this time," Metro said in a statement. Passengers who refuse to have their bags inspected will be denied entry into the subway system.
Decius: What you tell Google you've told the government.
Eric Schmidt: If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
Email Privacy Protected by Fourth Amendment | Electronic Frontier Foundation |