said by sd70mac666 :

Bush cannot circumvent or attempt to circumvent it. That's what he's been doing all along. Finally a judge put an end it it, and the Democrats also put an end to it.

said by TK Junk Mail :

This was based on a federal law passed over 20 yrs ago(long before Bush).

said by TK Junk Mail :

This was based on a federal law passed over 20 yrs ago(long before Bush). And the ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court.

said by jsouth :

So in other words you and others just post in these forums to bash Bush regardless of whether or not it actually pertains to him.

said by jarthur31 :

Lincoln was dead wrong when he said "of the people, for the people, by the people."

said by jarthur31 :

Having said that, the two party system has failed miserable and it's time to dump it altogether. The corporations run things now and nobody seems to care.

said by jarthur31 :

Lincoln was dead wrong when he said "of the people, for the people, by the people."

said by TK Junk Mail :

This was based on a federal law passed over 20 yrs ago(long before Bush). And the ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court.

said by bmn :

I though you guys were all about the strict interpretation of the document, not legislating from the bench. Allow the government full access to emails without a warrant basically amounts to that.

said by TK Junk Mail :

I'll wait until the Supreme Court decides on the constitutionality of this particular law. I don't presume to be a constitutional law expert and will wait until the appeals process runs its course.

said by TK Junk Mail :

I don't presume to be a constitutional law expert...

said by sd70mac666 :

DOn't you mean the King of All He Surveys?
Government has shown a complete disregard for laws, and the Courts are starting to catch onto it and have put a stop to it.

said by Doctor Dan :

I'm sure the King of America and his Bushbots will figure out some way to skirt this ruling.

- Dan

said by Doctor Dan :

I'm sure the King of America and his Bushbots will figure out some way to skirt this ruling.

- Dan

said by sd70mac666 :

so does that mean I can go out and shoot someone and argue in court that the cops and the prosecutor's office are violating my second amendment right?

said by footballdude :

There is no privacy in e-mail. Unless it is encrypted, an email is wide open to every server it flows through on it's journey. Without an expectation of privacy, the fourth amendment doesn't apply.

said by DaveO :

footballdude, that's like saying we don't have an expectation of privacy with the letters we mail because many postal workers handle it on its journey.

said by footballdude :

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this will be overturned. One of the big considerations in whether authorities can snoop on something is if the parties involved had an expectation of privacy. There is no privacy in e-mail. Unless it is encrypted, an email is wide open to every server it flows through on it's journey. Without an expectation of privacy, the fourth amendment doesn't apply.

said by N3OGH :

Ahh, but I think there's a certain flaw in your reasoning. See, it's all in the perception. The average person who uses e-mail is often led to believe it is secure. If you lose your password, it can be e-mailed to you. When you register for a new account someplace like BBR, they e-mail you your activation.

The average e-mail user isn't aware of how "out in the open" e-mail really is. Remember, it's all about the EXPECTATION of privacy, not the reality of it.

I think most non tech oriented people would expect their e-mail to be secure.

For most people, I think that expectation does exist, and I think most non tech people (like judges!) will see it that way.

Under the 1986 federal Stored Communications Act (SCA), the government has regularly obtained e-mail from third parties without getting warrants and without letting targets of an investigation know (ergo, no opportunity to contest).

said by Cabal :

There is no more expectation of privacy in a plaintext email than there is in an open-face postcard.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House aides with Republican Party accounts, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reported Monday. The White House says the accounts were set up to keep political work separate from official business, but investigators concluded White House officials used the accounts to conduct official business in a way that circumvented the Watergate-era Presidential Records Act.

The 37 accounts the Republican National Committee did save include nearly 675,000 individual messages -- more than 140,000 of them from Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser.

"Whether intentionally or inadvertently, it appears that the RNC has destroyed a large volume of the e-mails of White House officials who used RNC e-mail accounts," the report states. The committee found 88 officials who held GOP e-mail accounts; the White House had acknowledged 50.

In a deposition given to committee aides, former Rove deputy Susan Ralston listed a series of White House officials who used party accounts daily. But the RNC "has not retained a single e-mail to or from any of these officials," the report states. Ralston testified that Ken Mehlman, former director of political affairs, used his account daily, but the RNC has no e-mail records for him. Additionally, "there are major gaps in the e-mail records of the 37 White House officials for whom the RNC did preserve e-mails," the report states.

The committee, led by California Democrat Henry Waxman, began looking into the GOP e-mail accounts after messages from the accounts turned up in two cases -- the case of imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the 2006 firings of eight U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department.

The committee found that although then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered presidential staff to preserve official e-mails from outside accounts, he failed to enforce that policy. Ralston told investigators that Gonzales, now attorney general, knew Rove was using his party e-mail account for official business, "but took no action to preserve Mr. Rove's official communications," the report states.

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