Last Monday: Chevron granted access to environmental activists' email accounts

[Judi Lynn]

Alex White Posted by
Alexander White
Monday 15 July 2013 07.54 EDT guardian.co.uk

Chevron granted access to environmental activists' email accounts

Is oil giant Chevron trying to stifle criticism of its Ecuadorian oil drilling operations by accessing private email accounts of critics?



Oil giant Chevron has been granted access to "more than 100 email accounts, including environmental activists, journalists, and attorneys" involved in a long-running dispute involving damage "caused by oil drilling" in Ecuador, reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which, with EarthRights International (ERI), is opposing the New York court's decision says:

After years of litigation, an Ecuadorian court last year imposed a judgment of over $17 billion on Chevron for dumping toxic waste into Amazon waterways and causing massive harm to the rainforest. Instead of paying, Chevron sued more than 50 people who were involved in the Ecuador lawsuit, claiming they were part of a conspiracy to defraud the oil giant. None of the individuals represented by EFF and ERI has been sued by Chevron or accused of wrongdoing.

Both EFF and ERI have warned that Chevron's subpoenas will have a "chilling effect" on people who would speak out against the oil company's activities in Ecuador and elsewhere.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/southern-crossroads/2013/jul/15/chevron-environmental-activists-email-accounts

[dtom67]

1. don't worry.....

Government subsidized corporate espionage is legal. However, criticism of nsa sspying WILL earn you the label of "snowdon - lover ", "hair - on- fire", or (more recently) "South America Lover" . Or you must be an "Obama hater". These labels are,of course, offered in lieu of a defense of government funded spying. Let's face it: " we need to spend bllions spying for the 1%, but we also need to destroy social security, medicare, ALL socal programs, and lower te standard of living for most Americans" is a difficult position to defend. So, we just have to accept the name calling.
And if a few terrorists ( sorry, "environmentalists &quot end up dead, so what?
.....

[Judi Lynn]

2. Court: Chevron Can Seize Americans' Email Data

Court: Chevron Can Seize Americans' Email Data

In an almost unprecedented decision, a federal judge has allowed Chevron to subpoena Americans' private email data—and said the First Amendment doesn't apply.

—By Dana Liebelson

| Mon Jul. 22, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Thanks to disclosures made by Edward Snowden, Americans have learned that their email records are not necessarily safe from the National Security Agency—but a new ruling shows that they're not safe from big oil companies, either.

Last month, a federal court granted Chevron access to nine years of email metadata—which includes names, time stamps, and detailed location data and login info, but not content—belonging to activists, lawyers, and journalists who criticized the company for drilling in Ecuador and leaving behind a trail of toxic sludge and leaky pipelines. Since 1993, when the litigation began, Chevron has lost multiple appeals and has been ordered to pay plaintiffs from native communities about $19 billion to cover the cost of environmental damage. Chevron alleges that it is the victim of a mass extortion conspiracy, which is why the company is asking Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, to cough up the email data. When Lewis Kaplan, a federal judge in New York, granted the Microsoft subpoena last month, he ruled it didn't violate the First Amendment because Americans weren't among the people targeted.

Now Mother Jones has learned that the targeted accounts do include Americans—a revelation that calls the validity of the subpoena into question. The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously, and in cases involving Americans, courts have often quashed subpoenas seeking to discover the identities and locations of anonymous internet users. Earlier this year, a different federal judge quashed Chevron's attempts to seize documents from Amazon Watch, one of the company's most vocal critics. That judge said the subpoena was a violation of the group's First Amendment rights. In this case, though, that same protection has not been extended to activists, journalists, and lawyers' email metadata.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represents 40 of the targeted users—some of whom are members of the legal teams who represented the plaintiffs—and Nate Cardozo, an attorney for EFF, says that of the three targeted Hotmail users, at least one is American. Cardozo says that of the Yahoo and Gmail users, "many" are American.

More:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/chevron-ecuador-american-email-legal-activists-journalists

[bemildred]

3. I just can't believe our courts have sunk to this level.

But there it is.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Court Gives Chevron Access To Nine Years Of Americans' Email Metadata

Court Gives Chevron Access To Nine Years Of Americans' Email Metadata
by Mike Masnick
Tue, Jul 23rd 2013 7:03am

from the seems-a-bit-extreme dept

For a few years now, we've been following a rather troubling legal fight between people in Ecuador and Chevron -- the oil giant that has been in a long-term legal battle with people in Ecuador over some of its actions in that country. A few years ago, we wrote about how Chevron was ordering a documentary filmmaker to turn over cut footage, claiming that it might exonerate the company (the filmmaker tried to hold it back, claiming it was protected under journalist shield rules). However, last fall, we noted something perhaps even more troubling. Chevron had issued subpoenas seeking various email info from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft going back years. As we noted at the time, they weren't seeking the content of the email, but the were seeking what many more people are now familiar with as "metadata." But, metadata can be quite revealing.

When we wrote about this case a year ago, it was under the context of one person, Kevin Heller, whose data was sought, and him successfully fighting back (with some help from the ACLU) getting Chevron to drop the request for his info. But, as for everyone else's info? Mother Jones alerts us to the news that a judge in NY recently said it was okay for Chevron to get all that metadata, in some cases going back nine years.

...a federal court granted Chevron access to nine years of email metadata—which includes names, time stamps, and detailed location data and login info, but not content—belonging to activists, lawyers, and journalists who criticized the company for drilling in Ecuador and leaving behind a trail of toxic sludge and leaky pipelines. Since 1993, when the litigation began, Chevron has lost multiple appeals and has been ordered to pay plaintiffs from native communities about $19 billion to cover the cost of environmental damage. Chevron alleges that it is the victim of a mass extortion conspiracy, which is why the company is asking Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, to cough up the email data. When Lewis Kaplan, a federal judge in New York, granted the Microsoft subpoena last month, he ruled it didn't violate the First Amendment because Americans weren't among the people targeted.

Leaving aside the fact that the court thinks it's okay to do this even if it's just "non-Americans" who have their privacy violated here, Mother Jones points out that this claim that it only targeted non-Americans isn't, in fact, true. Pesky details.

Now Mother Jones has learned that the targeted accounts do include Americans—a revelation that calls the validity of the subpoena into question. The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously, and in cases involving Americans, courts have often quashed subpoenas seeking to discover the identities and locations of anonymous internet users. Earlier this year, a different federal judge quashed Chevron's attempts to seize documents from Amazon Watch, one of the company's most vocal critics. That judge said the subpoena was a violation of the group's First Amendment rights. In this case, though, that same protection has not been extended to activists, journalists, and lawyers' email metadata.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represents 40 of the targeted users—some of whom are members of the legal teams who represented the plaintiffs—and Nate Cardozo, an attorney for EFF, says that of the three targeted Hotmail users, at least one is American. Cardozo says that of the Yahoo and Gmail users, "many" are American.

More:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130722/16172623890/court-give-chevron-access-to-nine-years-americans-email-metadata.shtml

[cprise]

5. K&R