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Wiretap Ruling Could Signal End of E-Mail Privacy
(Matt Hicks, eWeek, July 1, 2004)
A federal appeals court ruling this week has put a spotlight on the increasingly public nature of e-mail messages and has unraveled expectations that e-mail would gain the same privacy protections as traditional communications. . . . The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that protections under the federal Wiretap Act do not extend to e-mail messages stored on an e-mail provider's computer systems. . . . The fact is that there is now an emerging line of precedent in the courts that people should not expect privacy in their e-mail, for the most part," said Mark Plotkin, a partner at law firm Covington & Burling, in Washington, D.C. . . . Privacy advocates immediately called the ruling a blow to privacy rights, and technology attorneys agreed that the court's decision should put an end to users' expectations that their e-mails are safe from prying eyes. . . . The court's decision hinged on the fact that the Wiretap Act, which dates to 1968, covers eavesdropping on live communications such as a phone conversations but not on stored communications, such as an e-mail message even temporarily stored on an e-mail provider's servers or computers en route to a recipient. . . . The appeals court agreed that "the language may be out of step with the technological realities of computer crimes." But it argued that it is the role of the U.S. Congress, not the courts, to change any language in the law to extend the eavesdropping protections to e-mail and electronic communications. . . . [COMMENT: And if the anti-Patriot Act is any indication, the U.S. Congress isn't about to come to the aid of privacy advocates any more. Big Brother is so deeply a part of American culture today, that you have to assume everything you do online is being monitored.] . . . "What the courts are telling us is that unless the Wiretap Act is changed, e-mail should be viewed as public communication that anybody could potentially view," Plotkin said. . . . the ruling does remove what could have been one barrier to ISPs accessing e-mail for such activities as data-mining it for commercial purposes, said Paul Winick, a partner at law firm Thelen, Reid & Priest LLP, in New York. [COMMENT: With this ruling, I wonder how popular Google's 1 Gig of storage space for old email will be?] . . . Arrison said that rather than seeking new privacy laws, e-mail users need to embrace encryption methods for securing sensitive e-mails. . . . "E-mail is just inherently insecure, and we have a whole bunch of problems because of it," Arrison said. "There are two things to take from this ruling: Know that your e-mail is not private and it never has been, and figure out what to do about it."

posted by LoZo 12:08 PM