Archive for October, 2018

October 1, 2018

Oct 01 2018 Published by under Uncategorized

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8 

Washington, D.C. October 1, 2018: ”American government agencies – state, local, and federal — made a record 33,602 requests to read emails or gather other information sent through Google’s Gmail and other services in 2018, two thirds without warrants.

Google maintains records of all email and other communication sent through its e-mail, telephone, YouTube, and other services. It stores the information on cloud servers – a move that allows government agencies, local, state, and federal, to access information without a warrant.

Current Federal law allows government agencies to access Google’s archived email and other data, including chat logs, YouTube user information, voice messages, and blogger information without obtaining a search warrant or establishing probable cause, and Google always complies with all governmental requests for data.

The government currently can access data, including the content of emails sent or received through Gmail, because Google keeps records of all communications sent over its various services and stores the information on cloud servers, lowering the legal threshold government agencies need to access some of the data, including the name, Internet address, and telephone number of Gmail, YouTube, and other Google users.

The federal law that allows this is known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) which says that opened email stored remotely – not on a computer’s hard drive – can be accessed without a warrant.

If the government wants to read the content of an email accessed through Gmail, hear a voicemail message sent over Google’s telephone service Google Voice, or read other private content, it must still obtain a search warrant under federal law.

However, information not sent in the body of an email or recorded in a voice message can be obtained by a simple subpoena – which does not require a government agency to show probable cause. Such information includes the name of an e-mail account holder, the IP address used when signing into and out of Gmail including dates and times, and other information you gave to Google when you created Gmail or other Google account.

Other types of information require a court order from a judge, such as the IP address of a particular email, email addresses of those you correspond with, and the web sites a person has visited.

Google does not notify users when the government demands to read subscriber’s emails or free and unfettered access to their account information.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Donald Trump has said 2291 false things as U.S. president: No. 37
  • Mommy dearest: a psychiatrist puts Donald Trump on the couch
  • Kavanaugh v Ford: the parading of sexual assault victims has to end
  • Brett Kavanaugh’s classmate says he lied about drinking
  • Ted Cruz Is Running as a Populist. Here’s His Little-Known History as a Corporate Lobbyist.
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
  • A CIA lucky break? How the death of the ‘Smiling Pope’ helped Washington win the Cold War

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