May 2010

Dear Client,

Things were a lot smoother here this past month, although I can’t say the same for national Internet-related issues.

A recent decision by the Supreme Court neutered the FCC’s ability to compel carriers to treat all traffic equally.  The common term for this is ‘net neutrality’—treating all traffic with the same priority, and not restricting one type of traffic vs. another.  This has made the Internet what it is today.  Without it, companies such as Comcast could block or slow down traffic from sources they don’t like—such as their competitors—in order to gain a competitive edge for services they offer.  Or also technically possible: monitoring your email during transmission and sending you targeted spam.

Were this to apply to phone service, Verizon could block or degrade phone call quality from their competitors.  Yes, it does sound ridiculous.  And it should sound equally stupid for Internet service providers.

The reason the rules are different for phone companies vs. Internet providers is they are classified differently by the FCC.  The former are regulated while the latter aren’t.  But ISPs weren’t regulated per a decision by the FCC...and the FCC can change its mind.  There are good arguments as to why the original decision to de-regulate them was flawed.  Time will tell how that works out.

In another case that caught our attention, the Justice department tried forcing Yahoo to turn over email from clients when that email was less than 180 days old.  I didn’t realize until now that the federal government has passed a law requiring companies to give law enforcement access to email when that email is over 180 days old—but only when it is on a server such as Yahoo or Gmail.  Even more—you aren’t notified when this occurs.  Contrast this to how the data on your personal computer is treated.  Probable cause must be present and a search warrant issued, and you are notified.  As it now stands, the standards gaining access to email kept on servers like Yahoo and Hotmail, etc. are much lower.
This concerns us and should you as well.  It is possible that you could cross a law enforcement officer and they could then get access to your email because they thought you may be involved with some type of ‘criminal activity’.  No proof needed.

Frankly, that’s just wrong and in our opinion, violates the 4th amendment to the Constitution against unreasonable search and seizure.

In this case, the Justice department dropped their efforts after a number of companies and organizations lined up behind Yahoo to try to block access to the email.

Sincerely,

Ben Conner