[Justice Department spokesman] Baker told a Senate committee that requiring a search warrant to obtain stored e-mail could have an "adverse impact" on criminal investigations. And making location information only available with a search warrant, he said, would hinder "the government's ability to obtain important information in investigations of serious crimes."

Do your want the government, the DOJ, to be able to read YOUR stored email without first obtaining a warrant? Worse, would you want it of a reestablished "Nixon" DOJ?

I don't want that for YOUR email; because I certainly do not want it for MINE.

Others with concerns over DIGITAL DUE PROCESS, this page.

The headline is a quoted paragraph from within an excellent April 6, 2011 CNET report about digital privacy hearings in DC [with a host of links for follow-up reading]. A mid-article excerpt:

What's unusual about the coalition to be announced Tuesday is that it includes occasional rivals including AOL, Loopt, and Salesforce.com, sources told CNET. The nonprofit participants, too, have sharply different political views: the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Citizens Against Government Waste have signed on.

This push for cell phone privacy is likely to put the coalition at odds with the Obama Justice Department. A few weeks ago, Justice Department prosecutors told a federal appeals court that Americans enjoy no reasonable expectation of privacy in their mobile device's location and that no search warrant should be required to access location logs.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chair of the Judiciary committee, said at the time that it was necessary to "update and clarify the law to reflect the realities of our times." One coalition participant said the group has had meetings with the FBI, the White House counsel, and several congressional staffers.

There have been dozens of cases in the last year or so where the police have asked wireless companies for logs of which cell phones contacted a tower at a specific time, says Al Gidari, an attorney who advises wireless carriers. The proposed ECPA changes would require a search warrant for that information as well.

I did not vote for this Obama guy to have Bushco attitudes and goals continue in effect. I believe the operative term we were fed was, "Change." Not that politicians ever are to be taken at their word, doing that would be evidence of immaturity. However, ---

Bridges are being burned by this kind of jack-boot mentality being official DOJ "thinking."

It should stop.

It has no place in a free nation.

Previous CNET coverage.