EFF brief accuses DOJ of “backdoor wiretapping” +

In a recent brief by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Department of Justice has been accuse of “backdoor wiretapping” for ordering an ISP to proactively collect a suspect’s e-mails. From here, the DOJ planned to use the Stored Communications Act to subpoena the documents, allowing them to evade the required probable cause.

Ars Technica writes:

In the course of gathering electronic evidence in an investigation, apparently the Justice Department sometimes has trouble telling the difference between a subpoena of “stored communications” and warrantless wiretapping. But it shouldn’t be that hard to distinguish between demanding existing e-mail records from an ISP and ordering an ISP to proactively collect a user’s e-mail over a period of six months so that you can then go back and subpoena the collection. So, the EFF filed an amicus brief in Warshak v. United States to help ensure that the DOJ’s apparent confusion isn’t transmitted to the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

As part of a 2005 criminal investigation of Stephen Warshak for fraud, the government invoked the Stored Communications Act of 1986 to justify issuing a secret order to Warshak’s ISP, NuVox, demanding copies of Warshak’s e-mail. When Warshak found out that the DOJ was reading his e-mails, he filed a civil suit against the government, claiming that the manner in which the e-mail snooping was carried out violated both the SCA and the Fourth Amendment.

The full article can be found here.