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Comment by chadp | Hacker News Reader

A good (but already known) reason to leave gmail.

Hotmail would probably have had to do the same. The guy chose Gmail over Hotmail so people should leave Gmail? That's horrible logic.

This only makes sense if you get a server at an off-shore host for mail, instead of using major email providers.

You speak of "off-shore" as though it represents some magically lawless region. As useful as that might be for these purposes, it doesn't exist. Your server will exist in some country. That country will have laws; those laws may or may not favor you. That country may or may not wish to refuse a US court order. Most countries are on fairly good terms with the US, and unlikely to say "no" to a request for evidence based on what looks like a standard legal investigation. Many of the countries not on good terms with the US rank pretty high on the list of places not well known for respecting rights, least of all privacy. And on top of all that, keeping a server outside the US does not render you personally immune to a US warrant if you remain in the US.

(Most of the above applies for s/US/$country/g as well.)

You're likely better off hosting a mail server here in the US, not actually storing any mail on it, downloading the mail immediately to a local mail store on an encrypted disk, and using encrypted email to protect new mails. That still won't render you immune to prosecution, but you might consider the consequences of refusing to decrypt a server preferable to the consequences of revealing the contents of your email. Or not.

I'm not a lawyer but I believe it would be very difficult for an FBI prosecutor to raise a case to international status and get a foreign judge to issue a subpoena. Most countries are very protective of spying on their citizens or corporations.

I think the main danger of using a foreign host would be that the NSA has more spying leeway with international traffic so they probably will have already slurped and archived your mail off of the wire without needing to ask your mail host. SSL is supposed to help with that but I have my doubts that that stops the NSA if they want to target you.

Or do the above, and then delete the mail. Not with the intention of destroying evidence of course, but because your hard disk can only store 1024 megabytes and you want to save disk space.

How is it a gmail only problem? The government got a court order to force them, Google didn't hand it over willingly. It's the government who is at fault here and the shitty laws that enable it.

The article states that the government had a court order but didn't have a search warrant. It seems there is a loop in the system with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. My questions is, did Google 'have' to give over his Gmail account information? Or do they just comply to make their lives easier?

In today's society 'having to' and making your life easier is just about the same thing. Don't want to comply citizen? We do have those antitrust hearings scheduled in a few weeks, would be a shame if we found out you were running a monopoly and had to break up your company.

When US citizens are assassinated by presidential order rather than being brought to trial it's probably time to 'make your life easier' rather than wait around for the ICC.

Interesting point. It's not unlikely that played a role in their decision not to fight it (too much).

The ISP Sonic fought against having to hand over the data and lost.

Both Sonic and Google fought over the right to inform Mr. Appelbaum of the request for his data and won (afaik).

The article says it is not known whether Google fought against having to hand over the data, like the ISP Sonic did.

Which makes me assume the writers asked Google, they didn't answer, neither did they issue a press report one way or the other. Which leads me to believe that, no, Google did not fight the actual request and unlike the small ISP Sonic did just comply in order to make their lives easier.

Of course it's just speculation but why else would we know about the other case Google did fight in this matter?

Additionally, why would Google go through that trouble, they have no interest either way, and are not in the business of protecting their users from surveillance state governments. Apparently.

Or they simply knew they were going to lose from the fact that they have already gone through this with similar cases.

The law is the law, and they must comply.

The government doesn't need a search warrant to rummage through cloud data, that's the point.

Right, it is a good reason for leaving all US services, just singling out gmail would be unfair. Too bad so many major ones are hosted in the US (or at least by US companies). We really need a less centralized internet... Otherwise, when the US turns into a loony military dictatorship it takes us all with it.

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