Judging the wild internet
Another body blow to privacy on the Internet was delivered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who ruled on Friday in United States v. Forester that visited IP addresses and email header information such as the From and To fields are privacy-wise, the same as a dialed phone number and thereby subjected to a lesser standard of probable cause to enable the government to get a warrant.
The Court did mention in the ruling that a full url might require a higher standard because it reveals more information.
So, what's it mean? For starters, the value of shrouded IP relay systems just went up, as has the importance of both junky freemail accounts and pseudonymous remailers, such as they still are.
It's also one of the more intelligent rulings that I've seen related to the Internet. Most Appeals Courts either boot the issue completely or make a sweeping, unenforceable ruling. This Court has started the slicing up of the wild animal that is the Internet with razor thin legal knives, portioning the tasty bits for generations of lawyers to gorge themselves on. Many similar rulings will follow, I'm afraid.
The big one, of course, will be the one that outlaws usage of encryption.
Posted on July 09, 2007
