Digital Due Process

Tech companies are banding together in a privacy advocacy group called the Digital Due Process coalition, to pressure the US Congress to strengthen digital privacy laws, specifically making it more difficult for the government to access personal digital information:

Miguel Helft, Technology Coalition Seeks Stronger Privacy Laws

Under a proposed set of principles, law enforcement agencies or other government representatives would have to obtain a search warrant based on a showing of probable cause before they could obtain a person’s e-mail, photos or other electronic documents stored in a service like Gmail, Flickr or Facebook. Under current law, much of that information is accessible through a simple subpoena, which can be issued under looser rules.

Obtaining access to information about where people are located or the places they have visited would be protected under the same standard. Currently, courts are divided on whether access to location information requires a warrant or a subpoena.

Advocates of the changes said that the new rules were merely intended to ensure that protections that Americans have enjoyed in the past remain in place as technology evolves.

“The U.S. Constitution protects data in your home and on your PC very strongly,” said Mike Hintze, an associate general counsel at Microsoft.

“We don’t believe that the balance between privacy and law enforcement should be fundamentally turned on its head,” Mr. Hintze added, simply because people now choose to store documents online rather than in their homes.

Members of the coalition acknowledged they would probably face resistance. This year, Justice Department lawyers argued in court that cellphone users had given up the expectation of privacy about their location by voluntarily giving that information to carriers. The coalition said it expected a long debate before Congress agrees to change the law.

“We are not expecting that these will be enacted this year,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “But it is time to begin the dialog.”

The primary principle of Digital Due Process is that officials should have to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before accessing our digital information online or on our mobile devices, or the information offered to services based on our use of their services or devices. In particular, the government should not be able to access geolocation history from cell networks without a warrant based on probable cause, and our email, documents, and messages in online services and forums should likewise be protected.