I'm looking for the first email I ever wrote back in 87-88 or maybe 1986.
Is there an archive of emails?
If you used Yahoo, there might be a chance :)
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Judge Orders Yahoo to Explain How It Recovered ‘Deleted’ Emails in Drugs Case
Written by
[39]Joseph Cox
Contributor
*
July 22, 2016 // 07:50 AM EST
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A judge has ordered Yahoo to present a witness and provide documents
explaining how the company handles supposedly deleted emails.
The move comes in the appeal case of a drug trafficker who was
convicted, in part, because of emails Yahoo provided to law enforcement
that conspirators believed had been deleted.
Defense lawyers in the case claim that six months of deleted emails
were recovered—something [40]which Yahoo's policies state is not
possible. The defense therefore speculates that the emails may have
instead been collected by real-time interception or an NSA surveillance
program.
United States Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James, from a San Francisco
court, [41]granted the defense's motion for discovery in an order filed
on Wednesday.
[42]The case revolves around Russell Knaggs, from Yorkshire, England,
and a single Yahoo mail account. In 2009, Knaggs orchestrated a plan to
import five tonnes of cocaine from South America. At the time, Knaggs
was already serving a 16-year prison sentence for another drug crime.
As part of the operation, a collaborator in Colombia would log into the
email account “
slimjim25@ymail.com” and write a draft email. An
accomplice based in Europe would then read the message, delete it from
both the “draft” and “trash” folders, and write his own draft, in an
effort not to leave behind any messages that could later be read by law
enforcement.
The defense alleges there should have been nothing for law enforcement to
find
Sukhdev Thumber, a solicitor representing Knaggs in the UK proceedings,
[43]previously told Motherboard that the pair would sometimes simply
remove the text in the draft with the backspace key, rather than
deleting the email. Knaggs didn't actually use the account himself.
After receiving requests from UK police and the FBI in September 2009
and April 2010, Yahoo created several “snapshots” of the email account,
preserving its contents at the time—and revealing the messages. But the
defense alleges there should have been nothing for law enforcement to
find.
Yahoo's explanation is that the recovered emails were copies created by
the [44]email service's “auto-save” feature, which saves data in case
of a loss of connectivity, for example. The company has filed several
declarations from a number of its staff, but the defense said some of
those contradicted each other, and it wants more information.
The defense requested a half-day deposition and a wide range of
documents related to the design of Yahoo's email and retention system,
a copy of the retention software source code, and instruction manuals
for the peripheral equipment that was used to retrieve the emails.
But Yahoo has described the request as a “fishing expedition” and
“unreasonably intrusive.” Judge James agreed somewhat, and instead
ordered the company to release a more limited list of documents, and
prepare a witness to talk about specific topics, relating only to the
email account in question. If necessary, the documents will be filed
under a protective order.
Yahoo has until August 31 to produce a witness for the deposition and
provide any documents.
Thumber from the defense told Motherboard in an email, "We are very
pleased with the Judge's decision who was able to see the obvious
contradictions and problems with Yahoo's explanations. Once we obtain
the material, the same will be reviewed in order to advance our UK
appeal."
Topics: [45]yahoo, [46]email, [47]uk police, [48]FBI, [49]deleted
emails, [50]crime, [51]Russell Knaggs
Contact the author by [52]email or [53]Twitter.
You can reach us at [54]
letters@motherboard.tv. Want to see other
people talking about Motherboard? Check out our [55]letters to the
editor.
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