Google is a friend in need for Yahoo!

NEW YORK, USA: Sometimes, an enemy next to you is more helpful than a friend far away. Yahoo, which has been quietly fighting a legal war with the U.S. Department of Justice over an issue related to e-mail messages, has received heartening support from its arch rival Google and an alliance of privacy groups.

The coalition aims to fend off a broad request from DoJ for e-mail messages, a Cnet report said. They said in a 'friend-of-the-court brief' that a search warrant signed by a judge was necessary for the FBI or other police agencies to read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has taken a legalistic approach by filing a 17-page brief last month that acknowledges that federal law requires search warrants for messages in "electronic storage" that are less than 181 days old.

But some think Yahoo!'s impugned e-mails don't come under that definition. Attorney Pegeen Rhyne wrote in a government brief, "Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage. This court should therefore require Yahoo to comply with the order and produce the specified communications in the targeted accounts."

The coalition's take on the issue is that, “Users who store their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.”

"Society expects and relies on the privacy of e-mail messages just as it relies on the privacy of the telephone system," they further said in the brief, according to Cnet report.

The coalition also includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and TRUSTe.