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I see what you're saying, but there are at least two separate issues here. >> you have no property rights in your Facebook account, which is wholly owned by Fa

I see what you're saying, but there are at least two separate issues here. >> you have no property rights in your Facebook account, which is wholly owned by Facebook By this logic, do I also have no right to expect privacy when I mail a paper letter through the post office? After all, its sorting facilities are wholly owned by the government. I honestly don't know what the framers would have said about that. If I shouldn't expect privacy there, the argument is done. If I should expect privacy from the post office, there's a second issue: >> and which you use for free only as a guest By this logic, I should expect privacy from my cell carrier, because I pay to use their service, therefore my account and the data passing through it might be argued to be "mine". >> in a bank safety deposit box, there was typically a contract specifying that you had certain ownership rights... [snip] ... some kind of right-to-information-privacy that supersedes the fact that it's my server and I own its contents. Both of these parts of your comment suggest that I should be legally able to operate a service and specify in the user agreement that I won't give their data up for search without a warrant; that they have some ownership rights over their data. Sadly, I think the government would assert otherwise. The only loophole I've heard used so far is to operate a service which, through encryption, actually can't access users' data. And for all I know, that will be declared obstruction of justice.

_delirium 14y ago
On the letter analogy, things owned by the government are treated differently from things owned by a 3rd party in the private sector. The government generally is more restricted in its actions. And in the case of the USPS, there are further statutory restrictions beyond those required by the Constitution that are written into law, specifically about protecting the privacy of mail in transit. The same is true with phone calls: wiretapping statutes place certain requirements on when a wiretap can be authorized, beyond the minimums the Constitution would require. One of those (which the AT&T wiretapping scandal hit) is to actually make it criminal for a phone company to volunteer information to the federal government without a warrant, which basically closes down the 3rd-party-consent end-run around search warrants, since it explicitly makes it criminal for them to consent. I do think it's a good idea to consider extending some of these to email, given its pervasive role that's largely replacing what physical mail and phones used to carry. But that requires admitting that email to some extent needs to be treated less like a purely private-sector business, and more like a utility. Your last point is an interesting one, though. If a provider specifically includes in their service policies a promise not to give up the user's data, then it seems like the provider would have a good claim when they attempt to quash subpoenas, even if the user themselves doesn't have any particular rights in the matter.

_delirium 14y ago

On the letter analogy, things owned by the government are treated differently from things owned by a 3rd party in the private sector. The government generally is more restricted in its actions. And in the case of the USPS, there are further statutory restrictions beyond those required by the Constitution that are written into law, specifically about protecting the privacy of mail in transit. The same is true with phone calls: wiretapping statutes place certain requirements on when a wiretap can be authorized, beyond the minimums the Constitution would require. One of those (which the AT&T wiretapping scandal hit) is to actually make it criminal for a phone company to volunteer information to the federal government without a warrant, which basically closes down the 3rd-party-consent end-run around search warrants, since it explicitly makes it criminal for them to consent. I do think it's a good idea to consider extending some of these to email, given its pervasive role that's largely replacing what physical mail and phones used to carry. But that requires admitting that email to some extent needs to be treated less like a purely private-sector business, and more like a utility. Your last point is an interesting one, though. If a provider specifically includes in their service policies a promise not to give up the user's data, then it seems like the provider would have a good claim when they attempt to quash subpoenas, even if the user themselves doesn't have any particular rights in the matter.