‘Back door wiretap’ helped convict penis pill fraudster
Published: June 11, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other civil liberties groups are charging the government with having used a “back door wiretap” to obtain six months worth of a defendant’s emails without a warrant.
According to EFF, the act under which the emails were obtained “is only supposed to be used for obtaining emails already in storage with a provider.” Instead, the Justice Department ordered suspect Steven Warshak’s email provider to prospectively “preserve” copies of his future emails, which would otherwise have been deleted as they were downloaded.
The government then subpoenaed the provider for copies of the emails, thereby obtaining 27,740 of Warshak’s private communications without a warrant and without him being aware of the arrangment.
Warshak is the founder of the firm which sells the sexual enhancement product Enzyte, whose ads featuring “Smiling Bob” have been a staple of late-night television. Enzyte contains a variety of herbs traditionally believed to enhance sexual function, but there is no indication that it can increase penis size as claimed. Warshak was sentenced last year to 25 years in prison after being convicted on 93 counts of conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering. His company was ordered to forfeit more than $500 million but was allowed to remain in business.
The amicus brief filed by EFF argues that “Warshak had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of his email even when those messages were in the possession of his email provider NuVox, and that the Fourth Amendment required the government to obtain a probable cause warrant before seizing those emails. … The government plainly exceeded its statutory authority, and did so unreasonably, in violation of the statute’s plain language and the Justice Department’s own policies.”
EFF is asking the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to rule that this tactic “violated the Fourth Amendment and federal privacy statutes, as well as the Justice Department’s own surveillance manual” and to either acquit Warshak or give him a new trial.
“The government’s illegal email surveillance in this case raises troubling questions about how often the Justice Department has bent the law or broken it outright in other criminal investigations,” stated EFF attorney Kevin Bankston. “This ‘back door wiretap’ is yet another demonstration of why Congress must update the federal surveillance statutes to require comprehensive reporting on how the government is using its spying authorities.”
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Back door and Penis in the same headline? What is this, Fark?
In order for fascism to succeed, you must have nearly unlimited police powers.
There is SO MUCH wrong with the title of this article..
More robbery by the “JUST_US” bunch. When is America going to wake up and stop this Nazi cancer!
(((3)))
BTY….Read more about these Thugs and their operations here:
http://www.theominousparallels.blogspot.com
25 years is a long fugging time to serve for false advertising. I took hundreds of those pills and my nine inch hog didn’t grow a centimeter.
Thanks for letting us know about the size of your “Hog” natty. So are we subtracting the standard internet 3″ or should we up that to 5″ for admitting you took those pills in the first place.
Measured like a cat’s tail - from the @$$hole out!
And someone with a 9 inch hog needs to extend his size for????
I’m not even sure they can bust him for false advertising. If his product does give you an erection [I don't have any idea if it does or doesn't], I think most of us [men, obviously] would have a bigger penis erect than flaccid. Deceptive advertising, yes, but maybe not false.
Now if it would make you hard, lose weight, whiten your teeth and cure male pattern baldness, that would be a money maker.
And a 9″ hog is as disturbing an image as the title of this story evokes.
sorry, i knew my comment crossed the line but i couldn’t resist b/c that product is so effing ridiculous. If you have ever even thought of taking this product you need a therapist b/c you have serious self esteem problems that are likely affecting other areas of your life. natty PHD edition
But, Bob as Santa. “Sack full of pride” He is such a good spokesman.
Ever heard of Mandingo or Lex Steele, google them. Also I think that is scary that his emails were taken without a warrant. It scares me to think that they should make a law that says whoever the provider is for your email or internet access, they have to notify you if a party is taking your email.
The “big” question is why these ads are still on the air.
I’ve given up on most privacy issues. But I do think that crimes must be investigated. Google “fake Sam Sloan” to see the case my friends (the victims) are pursuing with the FBI and Secret Service, who have already seized computers. I reviewed 1500 of the evidence. The allegations against the perpetrators includes breaking into an attorney’s email and grabbing confidential communications, later making them public.
I’m all for privacy, and as you can see at Kos I am pretty far Left, but I want strong, constitutional tools for investigating Internet crimes.
“This ‘back door wiretap’ is yet another demonstration of why Congress must update the federal
surveillance statutes to require comprehensive reporting on how the government is using its
spying authorities.”
I wish the EFF the best of luck in getting this result. Sadly, I seriously doubt Congress will
do anything. In the past 4 years I have done all within my power to alert everyone I could about
warrantless domestic surveillance and how it threatens the foundations of constitutional law and
the idea of due process, to little avail.
Apart from the EFF, ACLU, CREW, and a few others, genuine news reporting organisations like Raw
Story (and specifically EXCLUDING all broadcast infotainment like CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, PBS
/ NPR, Fox), myself, and a minority of American Citizens, nobody seems to give a damn.
Just as nearly half of the citizenry approves of torture (!), my impression is that more than
half think government doing domestic surveillance without warrants, and corporate-sponsored
surveillance (in the name of demographics and “market research”) - my impression is that more
than half of the population think that’s just fine. That is, if they think of it at all.
Until that changes, and a widespread across-the-board uprising occurs, there is and will be no
real due process of law, there is and will be no true Bill of Rights. Nothing is really
enforcable in a court of Law anymore except for those with money and connections. In the United
States of America, You get only as much Justice as You can afford.
Oh, sure, there is an occasional decision by a court that seems to go the other way; and there is
the occasional congressionally sponsored dog and pony show on legislative “efforts” that would in
virtually every case make minor and inconsequential improvements. But in neither case do the
results make much of any difference. And as George Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H. W.
Bush have shown, we can all just forget about the executive branch doing anything except
accelerate the gutting of Due Process of Law, Constitutional Law, Individual Rights and Personal
Privacy. Presidents do this to elevate the rights of corporations, cartels, and oligarchs /
oligarchies.
And as cute a tap dancer as Obama is, and as much I wish him well, he has already shown he is no
different.
History is my guide. And it’s not pretty.
For whatever it’s worth, I put together a bunch of widely scattered pdfs a couple of years ago on
the subject of warrantless domestic surveillance, and converted them to html files with links to
references and citations. I detest the user interface of pdf’s and always have - the user
interface is designed to cater to proprietary interests, like DRM, and makes me feel like I’m
reading a book through a slot in the wall and turning the pages with a yardstick.
You can browse, or download this collection here:
http://thewall.civiblog.org/rsf/nsa.html
-dcm
That’s not all they do…They use ‘onstar’ to listen in on the conversations of our lawmakers and us regular folks. another thing they do is the remote unlock feature to do a warrantless search. the real ugly part is the open mike feature. those of you who want to deactivate “ONSTAR’ find the fuse location on the car manual, remove same.
MPC: Monitoring Precedes Control
However, for all the times he made me scramble for the Mute button with those annoying, whistling ads- prison time is justifid.
There is no magic to getting investigations and prosecution of the government’s excesses…. just a lot of hard work.
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