Codebreaker

Law enforcement officials are looking at your emails

John Moe Apr 13, 2011

Privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian is out with a new paper that shows that law enforcement officials are increasingly asking for access to your emails, text messages, mobile phone location data, “but there’s no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data.” From Soghoian’s paper: “There are no mandatory reporting requirements. As a result, most modern surveillance now takes place entirely off the books and the true scale of such activities, which vastly outnumber traditional wiretaps and pen registers, remains unknown.” Soghoian says Congress should have oversight in this area.

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