Landmark protection for privacy

Congratulations to EFF for a big win on privacy rights:

In a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. Closely tracking arguments made by EFF in its amicus brief, the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.

This probably won't stop all of the warrantless eavesdropping enacted under Bush and continued and expanded under Obama, but it sets important case law that speaks directly to the government excesses in domestic surveillance. Big props to EFF for relentlessly working to protect our rights on the electronic frontier.

I believe EFF is non-profit so if anyone is looking to dump money at the end of the year on charitable donations for tax purposes, you couldn't find a better organization to support.