FBI Director Rober Mueller III, via the Department of Justice
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The FBI sent the ACLU "excerpts from two versions of its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG), from 2008 and 2012," which is notable because they fall on either side of the 2010 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on United States v. Warshak, in which the court ruled authorities must get warrants before forcing email hosts to hand over user emails.It's important to note that Warshak only applies to the Sixth Circuit, which only comprises four states. And it appears it had little effect. According to the ACLU, neither version of the FBI's handbook for domestic investigations states that warrants are required for all emails.The FBI argues that the law states citizens have no expectation of privacy on transmitted information, and that accessing six month old emails only require a subpoena.
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Attorney General Eric Holder, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, speaking at a press conference about the 2010 attempted Times Square bombing. Via the Justice Department
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So, first we've got the FISA precedent set by the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that the plaintiffs suing to overturn the law couldn't prove that they'd actually been hurt by a secret wiretapping program. Now the FBI is getting closer to getting far more wiretapping ability (with warrants, but the backdoors would allow for little oversight) following years of terror and crime drumbeating. That's despite the fact that the FBI and DoJ have been shown, in their training manuals and court cases, to believe that warrants aren't required for all wiretaps.Pile that on with the opaque, broad spying powers of the National Counterterrorism Center; the case of David House, in which Homeland Security said it could confiscate and examine a laptop's data because it has the power to examine "closed containers" at border crossings; the FBI's continued legal battles over fake cell phone towers; NYPD officials stating that online suspects need to prove their innocence; and the Obama Administration's unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers.What have we got? A state that's unrelenting in waving the specters of crime and terrorism to eliminate Americans' privacy protections, especially on the internet, while trying to distract criticism with gestures like open data projects. We're reaching the end sum of a long trend: in the US, privacy is now a myth, unless you're working with the government.We're ruled by a state that's unrelenting in waving the specters of crime and terrorism to eliminate Americans' privacy protections.