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137 Comments
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+66So really, "Delete Forever" should be renamed as "Store Indefinitely at Google but Remove from My Line of Sight".
Yeah, Google is not creepy AT ALL. I heard they're coming out with Google BrainScan next, so they can map your mind. - TKDWILSON, on 10/12/2007, -5/+32What did Google do? They offered a service that is valuable to many people. They were upfront about their mission. They only release data to subpoena's for people who are more than likely criminals. DON"T SEND ANY REALLY IMPORTANT EMAIL UNENCRYPTED. That simple. If you are doing something massively illegal, greater than just warez, then Encrypt everything.
Eric Wilson - gronne, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24Wow. Between this and the re-classification of our historical documents, decreased government transparency, is anyone not at least a little freaked out yet?
- dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -10/+23You guys are missing the ***** point, a great big red arrow to your ignorance.
It's not whether or not you do anything illegal now. It's just the slow peeling away of freedoms. Say we don't care. We don't do anything, because you ***** convince people that they shouldn't get off their asses and protest this crap. When comes a day that something you take for granted, something you do now without any reprocussions becomes illegal under a new policymaker in the government?
When the Nazis took over Germany, they didn't just wrangle up all the Jews at once. They started with criminals, and then semi-criminals, and then people who objected them. Whoever was left had no rights. This isn't something that happens overnight, and you need to have some god damn foresight, otherwise, you're just ignorant, and you need to get out of the way. - ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16What are you? An idiot? This isnt some random guy, its a guy being tried of a crime. When you are charged with a crime, your car can be searched, your bank accounts frozen, house can be invaded. Your personal living space! and you are claiming searching email is a big deal?
- Salmonax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Apparently he targeted people attempting to repair and rebuild their credit, so it's likely lower-to-middle class individuals these millions were stolen from.
- clownguyx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13This was a lot different then what the government is asking of google. This was ordered by a judge with a specific agenda, for a specific person, who committed a crime. It's no different then searching the home of a suspected criminal with the proper warrants.
The federal case, on the other hand, is a completely different story. In my amateur opinion it is illegal, and it is definitely wrong. - ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9what are you talking about? Did you even read the story? When you are charged with a crime, your house can be invaded. Your personal living space! and you are claiming searching email is a big deal?
- calebb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I almost submitted this story this morning, but before I submitted it I found that it was a dupe of a dupe of a ...
http://digg.com/technology/Judge_orders_Gmail_disclosure
http://digg.com/technology/Police_blotter:_Judge_orders_Gmail_contents_disclosed
http://digg.com/technology/Judge_orders_Gmail_contents_disclosed
and now... http://digg.com/security/Google_receives_subpoena_for_deleted_gMail
FYI, in the future, you can just click on one of the dupes it shows you - and then digg it! - nnonix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6No, they'd track postings/email by ip address through your isp and find YOU! Nobody tracks by screen name or email "from" address for obvious reasons.
- LaPistola, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11Come on.. What kind of idiot would use a gmail account to do illegal things.. If you don't want other people reading your email... don't use google. Use encryption! People cry all the time about privacy... yet they do nothing at all to protect it.
Its like WiFi.. If you don't want people using your WiFi.. secure it.. Same goes with everything. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6They have a WARRANT. The guy is a SUSPECT for a crime. The government not only has the RIGHT to get this information, they have a DUTY to do it. This is EXACTLY what I pay my taxes for. To keep pieces of ***** like this guy from preying on gullible people.
- abstraxion, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Encryption wouldn't help this guy. The court would order that he must decrypt the information, and if he didn't, he would be held in contempt. What you are advocating is analogous to a criminal locking up crucial evidence in a safe that only he knew the combination to: he would obviously be required to unlock it at the request of the judge or just go to jail anyway.
- TimmyGUNZ, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I dont' see how this is any different than the feds taking someones hard drive to recover deleted files? It looks like people are trying to blame Google for something that they're not really at fault for. It's not their responsibility to digitally shred your deleted emails.
- abstraxion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Unfortunately, what lawyers know as the "slippery slope" problem comes into effect here. Despite the fact that this man is a despicable criminal, if we allow subpoenas such as these to go unchecked, it is not entirely unlikely that the government will take it as a sign that subpoenas on increasingly shaky legal ground will be acceptable to the general public.
- abstraxion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I think the reason why this is an interesting news article is because Google is keeping your mail regardless of your desire to destroy it. The same document sent through the regular mail can be irrecoverably destroyed at will.
- Salmonax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The fact that mail may be kept indefinitely has been very clear in the Gmail Terms of Service since the very beginning. Hence the site www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com.
- LaPistola, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Well the confusion here is that this order came from www.whitehouse.com.. not .gov.. so thats why they want the spam. ;)
- jeolmeun, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Oh! So you have to delete your emails to your congressperson, not send.
- mikm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Encryption wouldn't help this guy. The court would order that he must decrypt the information"
Simple solution. There are several tools (I can think of TrueCrypt off the top of my head) that let you encrypt data so that you can plausibly deny it doesn't exist.
For example, if you enter password A, you get somewhat-sensitive (but non-incriminating) documents or porn (don't want others to see/know about, so you encrypted it). If you enter password B, you get the actual files you want to hide. - TimmyGUNZ, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4What if you are on the other end of this and some douche bag was stealing money from you? I bet you'd be happy that Google had backup evidence that proved you were a victim and you were able to be compensated.
- Braaaaaaaad, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5how would that be in contempt, there is a 5th amendment for a reason...
- jeff4379, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Except someone can't just sue you and ask for you email. There has to be a court order...something tells me that a judge wouldn't order the seizure of email based on a fravilous lawsuit...
- sirber, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Caring about my privacy doesn't make me a criminal...
Using PGP doesn't make me a terrorist... - tkerwin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You seem to assume that this subpoena is on shaky legal ground. The article doesn't go into the details, but if the prosecution has some evidence to support the theory that opening up these email messages will lead to more information about the fraud he is accused of, isn't the subpoena justified?
- PeterJS, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I'm not sure what you guys are up in arms about? Take Google out of the equation: if you commit a crime or are suspected of committing a crime, the investigative agency has the duty to gather evidence. In the process of gathering evidence, they ask a judge for the right to do this. If you go back 20 years, pre-email, the government would collect your notes, letters, telexes, whatever written documents you had. With the digital age, these searches are expanded to the internet and email. If you are under investigation, the judge has the right to issue subpoenas for anything: the evidence thus gathered is used in trials to prove you guilty or innocent. This has been done for years, so I do not see how you can object to an established, legal precedent. If you do, then you should contact your congressman and ask them to change the law.
If you are upset over Google retaining your "Deleted" emails, you should read the terms of service. It states that as a backup happens, deleted items may be kept. This is a normal part of doing backups: if you backup your POP email to tape today, then tomorrow you delete an email, you can still go back to the tape 6 months from now and restore it. This is the case here: Google keeps backups and the government is telling them to search through them and find emails for the individual under investigation. What's the problem?
Quoting from Googles Gmail privacy policy:
"Data retention
Some news stories have suggested that Google intends to keep copies of users' email messages even after they've deleted them, or closed their accounts. This is simply not true. Google keeps multiple backup copies of users' emails so that we can recover messages and restore accounts in case of errors or system failure. Even if a message has been deleted or an account is no longer active, messages may remain on our backup systems for some period of time. This is standard practice in the email industry, which Gmail and other major webmail services follow in order to provide a reliable service for users. We will make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical."
AND
"You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems. "
We are all concerned about our freedoms. None of us wants to see big brother, 1984, fascists, Stalin's communists tell us how to live our lives. What is happening here is hardly cause for concern.
If you are still concerned, switching email providers will not help as they all do the same thing. Using POP will hardly help, since the government can seize your PC and retrieve the data no matter how hard you try to erase is, unless you de-magnetize your hard drives.
In the end, if you want better privacy laws, use the law! How many of you know the name of your congressman or senator? They are your elected officials, they work for you, go tell them what we the people want: go to your senator and tell him/her: "I want a law that says email providers must wipe out and not keep my deleted emails, ever." Then follow up and if the law doesn't get passed, vote the person out of office.
Most people seem to think laws are against them: false. Use the law to your benefit and if don't like something, act and change it, don't sit on the internet and whine about it. Get involved! - lidflipper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I may be wrong, but I would say the 5th Amendment most certainly protects you from having to divulge an encryption key. They would be more than welcome to the evidence, which in this case are the emails. However, if they can't figure out what they say tough. I would be interested if anyone smarter than me on this issue knows of any court case that addresses this.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is a search conducted with a WARRANT.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Homeland Security, and was happening for DECADES before Homeland Security was even invented.
Please...try to keep up and stay on topic. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yes, you are innocnet until proven guilty. But this is HOW they get the evidence to prove him guilty. It is VERY easy to answer your question about his e-mail maybe having some privileged info. They scan it, and then they simply don't use that against him in court. THAT is what that law prohibits. You can't USE IT AGAINST HIM.
Saying this should prevent them from looking at ANY of the e-mails is like saying that a suspect can say "You can't search my house even with the warrant because I have some files in my room that you will not be entitled to due to client priviledge. So my entire house is not allowed to be searched.
Doesn't work that way. LEARN about the law. - brandizzle, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Getting a search warrant for a specific person and going through their emails I do not see anything wrong with.
We're told that our emails are never deleted.
If that includes emails sent to him then it'd be pretty easy to frame a person... - mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3wow, classic mistake of a moron: quoting others in an attempt to falsely raise the appearance of intelligence.
write your own quotes, and create your own opinions, otherwise you're just a messenger.
(woops just realised that koshak has already said the same thing..) - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5And how does this apply? Don't speak out, because you are not commiting fraud to hurt a lot of innocent people. People were NEVER allowed to do what this guy to to warrant the search (lgal) of his e-mail.
And honestly...there is nothing more unintelligent than merely quoting some historial figure and trying to make it look like you are intelligent becuase of it.
OK. you can copy and paste. That makes you smart.
However, especially in this case...it makes you look foolish when the quote it COMPLETELY unrelated to the topic. (If you don't see why it is unrelated, that is even worse.) - jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Actually it's not just like MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and others do it. They way these email services delete email is the same way you delete a file off most file systems. After you delete it, its space is marked as overwritable, so when the OS needs to shove some data somewhere it can over those sectors. No court order would force MSN, Yahoo, or AOL, to send bit wise copies of their servers to data recovery services to see if they might have bits of your deleted email bit rotted around.
Now Google on the other hand does nothing of the sort. When you 'delete' an email, the email is just tagged in their database program to not be visible to your email client, but it still perfectly accesable and not overwritten. - mikm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Or just use Tor.
- tkerwin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Exactly. People commenting seem to be under the impression that email is specially protected for some reason. Why would deleted email be any more protected than a box of letters you threw in the trash? Gmail's terms of service specifically state that they may have backups of your data that you don't control.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Anyone who is stupid enough to use any public online service for sensitive communications, or divulges financial or personal info to strangers, deserves everything that's coming to them. Freakin' noobs.
I'm not singling out Google, they've certainly been better than most, all I'm saying is: don't be so gullible! How many times now have you seen companies selling out their users or being hacked and the info stolen? Now you've even got the Homeland SS extorting companies out of the information. And it's even worse in the EU, remember that request to put a backdoor into Vista? Oh yeah, it's only for an emergency... right. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Iam fairly sure that Freedom of Speech has never allowed you to commit fraud with that speech.
- sirber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Encrypted with keys hushmail own...
In case of legal action, they will gladly decrypt your mails. - duke, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Interesting . . . if you throw a real object in the trash, legally it's "abandoned", and therefore fair game for anyone, even without a warrant. The key legal standard is whether you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in deleted email. I thought the comment about a "shred" button was interesting.
Kind of academic in this particular case, because the government got a warrant, and therefore got a judge to agree that there was probable cause for the commission of a crime.
In the US, the right to privacy is very limited - generally to issues of a highly intimate and embarrassing nature. What we are dealing with in this case is not a right to privacy issue, but a 4th amendement issue - the right to be free from UNREASONABLE searches and seizures. Since there's a warrant finding probable cause, it is constitutional. - cg0def, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3well google is just asking for trouble and anyone who knows a little bit of American history would know better. The feds are REALLY paranoid AND they have nothing against bending the law here and there ... hey it's not the first time they've done it. Of course the freedom of speech and right of private communication have nothing on the Patriot Act ... thanks Bush ... I guess Jesus told you to spy on people too right?
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3you guys do realize that hotmail and yahoo isnt any different right? most webmail aren't deleted from the server immediately, instead they are purged as the space is needed. deleting the data right on the spot would cause server file-system database strain, as thousands of users simultaneously attempt to delete multiple files.
- scsikool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If nothing more, this should give one pause if they consider using online storage and web based office suites if the data is stored online. I don't think it's a stretch to imagine your documents being subpoenaed by an ex-wife, business partner or anyone else.
- ToadX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Google! Delete our deleted e-mail goddamnt!
- ViperDaimao, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2you're right abstraction. However, the majority of comments in this thread are of the susbstance of "welcome to fascist amerikkka", glossing over the interesting tech aspect of this case.
- Braaaaaaaad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah I don't plan on leaving Gmail because of this, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. I'm glad Google's decision to save mail is helping to get a criminal off the streets.
- abstraxion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Braaaad: That's true, the fifth amendment protects this guy from having to testify against himself (self-incrimination in court). However, evidence doesn't "testify", so to speak, it is objective, and withholding that from police is a crime. A lawyer might have some success making your argument though.
- TimmyGUNZ, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Don't do shady ***** on free email. Easy as that.
- Raldikuk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Please define major.
- jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Maybe not the government, but probably you are, but you're definitely at interesting source of data mining for Google.
- Aeiri, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Become a libertarian and join the free state project, that will probably do more good than phone calls to the people in our government...
http://www.freestateproject.org/ -
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