privacy - Do email providers have to tell me which (inter)national agencies/institutes are requesting legal access to my account data?

08
2014-07
  • Juve

    I know this question is not technical, but i did not find the "stackoverflow for legal issues" and I guess all you super users out there might know the answer.

    Here is my (potential) problem:

    1. I have a free email account at a (inter)national email provider.
    2. I used the words "wikileaks" and "twitter" lately in my email.
    3. Some over-ambitious national security organization legally requests access to all accounts that behaved similarly.

    Q1: Can I request the who-, when-, and why-information related to this legal request from my provider? Does he have to tell me which (inter)national organizations (legally) requested my account data?

    Q2: Does the situation change if I live in Germany (and have a German provider)? I guess here are some German users. And I know that such a legal policy exists for our national credit rating agency. I can request who got access to my data, they have to tell me.

    Please answer only if you know a good answer, I don't want to start a long discussion on this none-technical question.

    • Answers
  • BenGC

    This all depends on the company that does your email. In the US, most service providers (mail, twitter, facebook, etc) will notify you because you may have the right to challenge the discovery in court. Of course, there instances when certain TLAs* might swoop in and check you out and you will be none the wiser :)

    I can't speak for other nations.

    *Three-Letter Agency


    • Related Question

    partitioning - Moving users folder on Windows 7 to another partition, bad idea?
  • Donat

    I am anxiously getting ready at long last to to carry out a clean install (using custom install option) from Vista to Windows-7 Home Premium 64bit with the free upgrade I received late October.

    For my Vista system I successfully set-up last Summer a multi-partitions scheme with Users and Program Data on a a different partition than the operating system. See this link link below, and its subsequent links in my comment for details.

    I was planning a similar set-up for Windows 7, a little more streamlined, with OS, Program Files on C:, Users and Program Data on D:, and TV media recording on a separate partition.

    Reading the Question submitted by Benjol, I am second guessing too.

    Is moving Users and Program Data on a different partition than the default primary partition with OS and Program Files such a good idea?

    The couple of people I talked to at the official Microsoft Windows 7 booth at CES 2010 gave the same answer to the intention of moving the Users profile folder to another partition.
    In a nutshell, they all told me that they used to do this in XP and less in Vista but not anymore with Windows 7...

    "It is stable, after two months still no problem" I had the feeling it was a scripted answer to emphasize how Windows 7 is so stable and efficient... (Will Windows-7 system not become bugged down over the course of several months to a year or two? Only time will tell)

    Long story short, I share the same view than Benjol expressed with respect to being "able to backup and restore system and user data independently." I just received a 2TB usb2, eSATA external hard drive as a back-up drive, which includes NTI Shadow 4 (4.1.0.150) for back-up solution. I took note of the issue with NTUSER.DAT and I will read more about Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for Windows 7.

    I am willing to put the effort if placing Users and Program Data on a different partition would allow to restore a fresher OS+Program image when the system gets bugged down.

    Questions:

    • Is it such a bad idea?

    • What is the "easy route" referred by Benjol in his post?

    • Is it to just relocate folders to another partition using the Folder property tool?

    (It is not practical for several users and might not provide a straightforward restore process of just OS and Program Files when needed.)

    I am starting to learn about Windows 7 libraries.

    • Would Windows 7 libraries be another alternative to achieve this?

    • Related Answers
  • harrymc

    The problems involved in moving the Users folder are:

    • Preserving special folders permissions and icons requires a full backup program rather than copy.
    • A backup program would also spare you fiddling around with moving each of Contacts, Desktop, Downloads, Favorites, Links, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, Saved Games and Searches.
    • Relocating these folders via Windows 7 may cause a problem when reinstalling Windows.
    • It's far easier to relocate it symbolically by creating a link on C that points to the other partition.

    The procedure as described in Moving your data where you want in Windows Vista:

    • Backup C:\Users using a backup program
    • Restore the C:\Users to your new desired location (example: D:\Users)
    • Start WinPE or Windows Installation disc command prompt
    • Using the command prompt
      1. rmdir /S /Q C:\Users
      2. rmdir "C:\Documents and Settings"
      3. mklink /J C:\Users D:\Users
      4. mklink /J "C:\Documents and Settings" D:\Users
    • Restart

    I advice to mind your backups before starting.

  • Scott McClenning

    To answer your last question first, Libraries could be an answer. The gotcha is using software that doesn't understand libraries. That software could default to the My Documents folder if they didn't write their code as Microsoft recommends.

    You could redirect folders to another location. For example the Documents folder if you right click over it, there will be a Location tab, there you will have the option to move the documents to another drive. However, you also want to redirect your Favorites, pictures, music and other folders. In Windows 2000 I know there were some group policies to redirect everything, I would imagine Windows 7 has similar policies.

    Even since Windows 2000 SP 4 I hadn't used redirection or even saved my data on another partition. One thing I have learn relatively recently is to have a good backup strategy, both for my data and OS. One thing I still have to work on is testing the restore. If you don't test your restore and know it works, you shouldn't count on it.

  • netrox

    Libraries do NOT actually hold data, they're basically shortcuts to folders. I think they're called "virtual folders" in the past.

  • Benjol

    when I talked about the 'easy route', I meant changing the location of Documents via properties (I haven't actually done it, so I'm not too sure).

    Obviously, it is not that 'easy' - because you have to do it independently for documents, images etc., and for each user. But as far as I know, it is the only 'Microsoft recommended' way - in any case it appears to be the only one that they went any way to implementing.

    I'm still waiting for the motivation to upgrade...