Re: Encrypted e-mail - what are the laws?

From: Rob Warnock (rpw3_at_rpw3.org)
Date: 08/15/04 

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 10:22:12 -0500

John A. Malley <102667.2235@compuserve.com> wrote:
+---------------
| And in the USA, IIRC, companies can read the email of any employee
| who uses a corporate email account per a recent US court ruling.
| US employees cannot expect privacy.
+---------------

Also per a recent U.S. Federal Appeals Court ruling, ISPs may read
the email of *anybody* while it's sitting on a spool disk (queue)
awaiting retransmission. Seems the anti-wiretapping laws are being
interpreted to *only* apply while the data is "in transmission",
and at least this appeals court doesn't consider data temporarily
sitting motionless in "/var/spool/mqueue/" (or equiv.) to be "in
transit". See these articles in the RISKS Digest [a.k.a. "comp.risks"]:

    <http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/23.44.html#subj2>
    Court rules e-mail eavesdropping okay

    <http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/23.44.html#subj3>
    Fed. Court Rules No Privacy For E-Mail Passing Through ISP Servers

Email users cannot expect privacy, period.

-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock <rpw3@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607

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