Did Yahoo win the Email Privacy case against The U.S. Justice Department?
The U.S. Justice Department has abruptly abandoned what had become a high-profile court fight to read Yahoo users' e-mail messages without obtaining a search warrant first.
In a two-page brief filed Friday, the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation.
Yahoo's efforts to fend off federal prosecutors' broad request attracted allies--in the form of Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation--who argued that Americans who keep their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had pledged that, as president, he would "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age." This dispute had the potential to test his administration's actual commitment to privacy, which recently became the subject of a legislative push supported by Silicon Valley firms and privacy advocates.
Much of the information about the case in federal court in Colorado remains unclear, including the nature of the possible crime being investigated, how many e-mail accounts are at issue, and whether it was the flurry of publicity in the last few days or something else that prompted the U.S. Attorney's office in Denver to back down.
On December 3, 2009, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ordered Yahoo to hand over to prosecutors certain records, including the contents of e-mail messages. Yahoo divulged some of the data but refused to turn over e-mail that had been previously viewed, accessed, or downloaded and was less than 181 days old.
A footnote to Friday's government brief says that the Justice Department "is aware that Yahoo and other various parties have now submitted briefs on various privacy issues in the context of the prior motion to compel. The government respectfully disagrees with positions taken in those briefs, but because the need for the motion to compel has been vitiated by Yahoo's further production, the government declines to litigate this matter in this moot context."
In a two-page brief filed Friday, the Obama administration withdrew its request for warrantless access to the complete contents of the Yahoo Mail accounts under investigation.
Yahoo's efforts to fend off federal prosecutors' broad request attracted allies--in the form of Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation--who argued that Americans who keep their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Two years ago, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had pledged that, as president, he would "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age." This dispute had the potential to test his administration's actual commitment to privacy, which recently became the subject of a legislative push supported by Silicon Valley firms and privacy advocates.
Much of the information about the case in federal court in Colorado remains unclear, including the nature of the possible crime being investigated, how many e-mail accounts are at issue, and whether it was the flurry of publicity in the last few days or something else that prompted the U.S. Attorney's office in Denver to back down.
On December 3, 2009, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ordered Yahoo to hand over to prosecutors certain records, including the contents of e-mail messages. Yahoo divulged some of the data but refused to turn over e-mail that had been previously viewed, accessed, or downloaded and was less than 181 days old.
A footnote to Friday's government brief says that the Justice Department "is aware that Yahoo and other various parties have now submitted briefs on various privacy issues in the context of the prior motion to compel. The government respectfully disagrees with positions taken in those briefs, but because the need for the motion to compel has been vitiated by Yahoo's further production, the government declines to litigate this matter in this moot context."
