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Justice Department Backs Down in Fight Against Yahoo! and Google

by Terrence O'Brien on April 17, 2010 at 09:00 AM

yahoo justice departmentWe mentioned yesterday that Google and a host of other privacy groups had filed a brief, on behalf of Yahoo!, to stop the courts from forcing the company to hand over the e-mail records of its customers to the Department of Justice (DOJ) without having been first served a warrant. Well, it appears the protest from the Web super power, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others, scared the Department off the case.

The government officially withdrew its request for access to the e-mail accounts of those persons under investigation, saying only that Yahoo! had provided other data and that investigators no longer needed access to the full texts. Originally, the Justice Department argued that, under federal law, the previously opened e-mails did not qualify as "electronic storage," since that type of data (which requires a search warrant) only applies to e-mails if they are less than 181-days old.

Whether the Department was unwilling to face civil liberties groups in court, or just unwilling to face them in a case it was sure to lose, is up in the air. For now, Yahoo! customers can rest assured that their messages are safe, but there is legitimate concern that President Obama is backing off his pledge to "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age." [From: CNET]

Tags: DepartmentOfJustice, doj, ElectronicFrontierFoundation, government, politics, privacy, top, yahoo

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