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Unfortunately, precedent holds that intercepting stuff broadcast over the wires is not a search. "In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that a pen regis
by pflats 13y ago
Unfortunately, precedent holds that intercepting stuff broadcast over the wires is not a search.
"In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that a pen register is not a search because the "petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone company." Since the defendant had disclosed the dialed numbers to the telephone company so they could connect his call, he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the numbers he dialed. The court did not distinguish between disclosing the numbers to a human operator or just the automatic equipment used by the telephone company."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland
- erichocean 13y agoUnfortunately, precedent holds that… While I can see why lawyers and judges should care about that bit of information, I completely fail to see why the common man should. Bad precedents, destined to be overturned, are created all the time. Even the Supreme Court overturns its own "precedents". So while I agree that info is not completely useless, it's not actually relevant to the question of what the common man should do, because that doesn't change: he should do what's right and just, regardless of the present position of the state.
- metaphorm 13y agoI believe that statute is the reason why Lavabit considered it legal to provide metadata information only. Numbers dialed is a form of metadata. The contents of the call (or email in this case) is another thing entirely. Thats really the basis of the appeal.
- shawn-furyan 13y agoIANAL, but "reasonable expectation of privacy" sounds like a default position when no expectation has been set between the customer and the service provider. In this particular case, there was an explicit expectation of privacy set out in the terms of service, and in fact that expectation was the entire justification for charging for the service amid a proliferation of free competitors. Of course my interpretation could differ from established case history, or even with a technical legal reading of that particular clause, but there seems to be a logical argument there (whether or not there's a legal one).