'No privacy for e-mail' (1 Viewer)

Zlatan

Senior Member
Jun 9, 2003
23,049
#1
'No privacy for e-mail'

Washington, July 1. (PTI): In a significant judgment, a US appeals court has ruled that a company that provides e-mail service has the right to copy and read any message bound for its customers.

The US Court of Appeals in Massachusetts said that because e-mail is stored, even momentarily, in computers before it is routed to its recipients, it is not subject to laws that apply to eavesdropping of telephone calls, which are continuously in transit.

As a result, companies or employers that own the computers are free to intercept messages before they are received by customers, it said.

Peter B Swire, an Ohio State University Law Professor who was a Privacy Advisor in the Clinton Administration, said that the ruling means that an e-mail provider "can intercept all your e-mail with impunity, and can read them and use them for his own business purposes."
 

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L'autista
Administrator
Sep 23, 2003
83,368
#4
Old news. It is as true today as it was 10 years ago: "never put anything in an e-mail that you wouldn't put on a postcard".

If only we'd see wider adoption of some kind of mail keying (PGP, etc.) -- that would not only help address this, but it should seriously cut down on the identity spoofing spammers love so much.
 

Elnur_E65

Senior Member
Feb 21, 2004
10,848
#5
I don't care if hotmail staff reads my personal mail- they may feel free to look through all the porn I send and receive.

But if I own a business... my competitors can come to my internet provider and read all my confidential information! This is wrong.

We're getting closer and closer to Orwell's "1984"
 

River

Senior Member
Jun 15, 2004
2,261
#6
Theres privacy in anything. Mobile phone calls, email, text messages. Whats new? It usually wont affect you as the people with permission to view wont know you on a personal level.

For example i heard on the local news a month ago about some guy who had texted his friend a song lyric that was something about a bomb on a plane or something. Investigators came to his house the next morning asking him to explain the text message.

Privacy dosent exist anymore, and frankly i dont care, i dont really need it :D
 

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