E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294,64043,00.html' target='_blank'>http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294,64043,00.html</a><br /><br /></div>"E-mail privacy suffered a serious setback on Tuesday when a court of appeals ruled that an e-mail provider did not break the law in reading his customers' communications without their consent. The First Court of Appeals in Massachusetts ruled that Bradford C. Councilman did not violate criminal wiretap laws when he surreptitiously copied and read the mail of his customers in order to monitor their transactions. ...Authorities charged Councilman with violating the Wiretap Act, which governs unauthorized interception of communication. But the court found that because the e-mails were already in the random access memory, or RAM, of the defendant's computer system when he copied them, he did not intercept them while they were in transit over wires and therefore did not violate the Wiretap Act, even though he copied the messages before the intended recipients read them. The court ruled that the messages were in storage rather than transit. "<br /><br />What this guy did was wrong. However, I don't know what law he broke. I have to agree that reading files on a computer is not a crime and doesn't fall under the WireTap act. Even if the contents of the file is meant for someone else. As long as you have legal access to that computer, then the files on it are fair game. Most email servers store the email as a plain text file on the hard disk, with no encryption and no directory permissions that would restrict a user from viewing those files. I think he's guilty of being a slime-ball. :wink:

[Don Sorcinelli]

This is another classic example of how new (and complicated) "electronic law" can be. Legal and legislative systems today tend to work on a "problem -> discussion/dispute -> action" principle. In this instance, we are at the "problem phase".

A "Nice Try" award should go to the prosecutors here for trying to address the problem by applying existing law. Since no legislation exists with specifics regarding e-mail privacy rights, they used the closest thing to try and apply precedent. Unfortunately, it was too much of a stretch.

The solution is through legislation, of course. But as is the case with most technology law today:

1) The legislators are not technical, and therefore have trouble grasping the real ramifications involved. I'm not being critical here (I don't expect legislators to all be techno-geeks), just realistic.
2) Lobbying and vested interests become the sources for information to legislators, and they (of course) swing the issue in favor of their bias.
3) At best, legislators are torn on the issue.
4) It's tough to get a legislator to support a law that they are uncertain about and could cost them votes.

This is happening daily in our legal and legislative branches with regards to technology. I tend to believe that one of two things must happen for legislative action to occur -

1) A violating act so severe occurs that the legislators finally swing into action;
2) Enough legislators come into office that are more exposed to technology (and its issues), and action occurs at a faster pace.

#1 is the short-term resolution, but means that people must suffer in order to effect change. #2 is the long-term resolution, and requires a sort of generational mind-shift (you need the "old guard" out of office).

BTW - On this particular issue, you have ISPs very closely watching all the legalities. Even the most honest of ISPs, however, have lots of legal loopholes in their Service Level Agreements. Why? Simple - their legal advisors structure the contracts to minimize liability. As long as their are no laws, the ISPs should not paint themselves into a legal corner. Round and round we go... :roll:

DonS

[Kris Kumar]

Wow 8O

And people are protesting GMail "robots" parsing mails for keywords???

Maybe we should convince Michael Moore to do a documentary on Technology and the Judiciary ;-) Wonder what the title would be?

[Phoenix]

...What this guy did was wrong... I think he's guilty of being a slime-ball. :wink:

I agree.


The problem here is that technology moves so fast, and legislature moves so slow. A classic case of the microwave vs. the crockpot.

We can't make laws fast enough to properly govern technology. We never will. This is a problem. How do we solve this problem? I don't know whether that particular problem can be solved. But digital privacy needs to supported and passed as a law very soon. Too many people don't respect boundaries.