Two key electronic privacy cases currently moving through the court system may expand the government's spying authority.
The first case was brought against the MPAA by the owners and operators of TorrentSpy, a search engine that let Internet users locate files on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. After a business dispute, one of TorrentSpy's independent contractors hacked into the company email and then sold the information to the MPAA. However, a federal district court ruled that because the emails were stored on the mail server for several milliseconds during transmission, they were not technically "intercepted". This dangerous ruling must be overturned in order to prevent the government from engaging in similar surveillance without a court order.
The second case concerns a request by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to a federal magistrate judge in Pennsylvania for authorization to obtain cell phone location tracking information from a mobile phone provider without probable cause. The magistrate demanded that the DOJ show probable cause, and the DOJ has appealed that decision. If it is overturned, there will be little protection in the law for cell phone users' location privacy.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Center for Democracy and Technology have filed a brief urging that the courts make the correct decisions.