> Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2007 17:10:45 -0700
> From: Richard Lake <rlake@...>
> Subject: MAP: US: Judges OK Warrantless Monitoring
> of Web Use
>
> Newshawk: 237,846 folks used MAP last month!
> Pubdate: Sat, 07 Jul 2007
> Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
> Page: B - 3
> Copyright: 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.
> Contact: letters@...
> Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
> Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
> Author: Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
> Referenced: The ruling
>
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/F0E09BB37A97D51A88257310004D1DAC\
/$file/0550410.pdf
>
> JUDGES OK WARRANTLESS MONITORING OF WEB USE
>
> Privacy Rules Don't Apply to Internet Messages,
> Court Says
>
> Federal agents do not need a search warrant to
> monitor a suspect's
> computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and
> Web pages the
> suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled
> Friday.
>
> In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S.
> Circuit Court of
> Appeals in San Francisco likened computer
> surveillance to the "pen
> register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the
> phone numbers a
> suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls
> themselves.
>
> The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of pen
> registers in 1979,
> saying callers have no right to conceal from the
> government the
> numbers they communicate electronically to the phone
> companies that
> carry their calls.
>
> Federal law requires court approval for a pen
> register. But because
> it is not considered a search, authorities do not
> need a search
> warrant, which would require them to show that the
> surveillance is
> likely to produce evidence of a crime.
>
> They also do not need a wiretap order, which would
> require them to
> show that less intrusive methods of surveillance
> have failed or would
> be futile.
>
> In Friday's ruling, the court said computer users
> should know that
> they lose privacy protections with e-mail and Web
> site addresses when
> they are communicated to the company whose equipment
> carries the messages.
>
> Likewise, the court said, although the government
> learns what
> computer sites someone visited, "it does not find
> out the contents of
> the messages or the particular pages on the Web
> sites the person viewed."
>
> The search is no more intrusive than officers'
> examination of a list
> of phone numbers or the outside of a mailed package,
> neither of which
> requires a warrant, Judge Raymond Fisher said in the
> 3-0 ruling.
>
> Defense lawyer Michael Crowley disagreed. His
> client, Dennis Alba,
> was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being
> convicted of
> operating a laboratory in Escondido that
> manufactured the drug ecstasy.
>
> Some of the evidence against Alba came from agents'
> tracking of his
> computer use. The court upheld his conviction and
> sentence.
>
> Expert evidence in Alba's case showed that the Web
> addresses obtained
> by federal agents included page numbers that allowed
> the agents to
> determine what someone read online, Crowley said.
>
> The ruling "further erodes our privacy," the
> attorney said. "The
> great political marketplace of ideas is the
> Internet, and the
> government has unbridled access to it."



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