NEW YORK - What do you do if someone checks your account, Google and Facebook, for an investigation was opened against you? And if you're not even notified of this "electronic searches? The dilemma hangs on Internet users in the United States, which could be - without even knowing it - the notorious National Security Letters, the letters in defense of national security requesting information on people suspected of any crime.The acronym of the law - certainly not "patriotic" for the former president - actually means "Providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstructive terrorism" or "providing appropriate tools to intercept and obstruct terrorism." But where does the threat of terrorism begins and where the right to privacy? The old question was revived by the recent order asking Twitter to provide account information to Wikileaks animators, who have published hundreds of confidential documents from the U.S.
government. In fact, the U.S. government also may have requested information to Facebook, Google and perhaps other companies. Twitter has decided to challenge the secrecy order, informing its users - including the founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange - to be under investigation. In the first half of 2010, Google had received 4,200 such requests.
In a full year, Facebook also has to respond to thousands of National Security Letters (told Newsweek to have 10 to 20 each day). Are also involved telephone companies like Verizon, which each year receives around 100 000 such requests. The letters are secret, you are prompted to execute the order, provide the information and warn people, for reasons of national security.
Twitter rebelled, arguing not so much the illegality of the order itself, but rather its secrecy. The founders of Wikileaks were warned. So it was, and why the news has become public domain. Users were told: If within ten days are not taken legal action against the Department of Justice Washington, Twitter will pass their information.
And Google and Facebook? They would have done the same? Or maybe you have already received letters and have obeyed the ministry? No one forced them to rebel against the secrecy. Google, in the past, said that most of the requests "are valid and the information used to legitimate criminal investigation." In the guidelines of the sites, it is stated that the two telecommunication giants are willing to work "with valid legal processes that require account information, and are not talking about a possible warning to users.
Several would like more protection. They would like, before accessing electronic databases, the investigators received the green light by a judge, not a prosecutor, as is currently the case. In short, for some available information on the server should have the same protection of the material held in a private home.
It may not have a point. At this time, email can be read without a warrant if a court were written by more than 180 days. It takes but a green light from court to hear phone conversations, and a real mandate when you enter a private home. The problem is that one of the most important U.S.
laws relating to privacy of communications, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, dates back to 1986, when phones and email were not yet popular (and social media did not exist). And so it is much easier to access email or text message used less than the traditional letter. Matteo Bosco Bortolaso
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