Subpoenas of Google show law's failings

Caleb Garling and Benny Evangelista

Updated 9:33 pm, Thursday, January 24, 2013

Google's latest biannual report on government information requests into its users, released this week, highlights for the first time how outdated privacy laws allow access to users' information with only a subpoena - not a warrant, the standard in almost all other searches.

In the United States, from July to December 2012, 68 percent of government requests came via subpoena, Google reported. Just 22 percent were through search warrants. (The remaining 10 percent were legal processes Google said were "difficult to categorize.") In total, government agencies made 14,791 requests on U.S. users and accounts, and Google complied with 90 percent of them.
Google products - search, Gmail, YouTube, Docs, etc. - are accessed billions of time every day by users around the world. Most require accounts, and so, to facilitate better advertising, the search giant stores users' online activity.

But governments want that information too, especially when investigating crimes. Out-of-date digital privacy laws allow law enforcement agencies to sidestep the usual constitutional requirement to obtain a search and use only a subpoena, a document that can be issued by a prosecutor in private, not an impartial judge in open court.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the law that governs such requests, was passed in 1986, well before terms like "e-mail" or "cloud computing" were common. Law enforcement agencies have interpreted the language to mean that they can treat any e-mail older than 180 days stored on a third-party server (such as Gmail or Hotmail) to be abandoned.

Therefore, the logic goes, it has no reasonable expectation of privacy - a key ingredient to the "unreasonable" portion of a search - and can be subpoenaed.  REA;D MORE

5 Reasons You Should Never Agree to a Police Search (Even if You Have Nothing to Hide)

From the streets of the Bronx to the suburbs of the Nation's Capital, you never have to look hard to find victims of the bias and corruption delivered by the drug war.

February 22, 2012

Do you know what your rights are when a police officer asks to search you? If you're like most people I've met in my eight years working to educate the public on this topic, then you probably don't.

It's a subject that a lot of people think they understand, but too often our perception of police power is distorted by fictional TV dramas, sensational media stories, silly urban myths, and the unfortunate fact that police themselves are legally allowed to lie to us.

It wouldn't even be such a big deal, I suppose, if our laws all made sense and our public servants always treated us as citizens first and suspects second. But thanks to the War on Drugs, nothing is ever that easy. When something as stupid as stopping people from possessing marijuana came to be considered a critical law enforcement function, innocence ceased to protect people against police harassment. From the streets of the Bronx to the suburbs of the Nation's Capital, you never have to look hard to find victims of the bias, incompetence, andcorruption that the drug war delivers on a daily basis.

Whether or not you ever break the law, you should be prepared to protect yourself and your property just in case police become suspicious of you. Let's take a look at one of the most commonly misunderstood legal situations a citizen can encounter: a police officer asking to search your belongings. Most people automatically give consent when police ask to perform a search. However, I recommend saying "no" to police searches, and here are some reasons why:

1. It's your constitutional right.    READ MORE