[PLUG] Email Legal Issues

Charles Sliger chaz at bctonline.com
Thu May 13 20:01:02 UTC 2004


> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-admin at lists.pdxlinux.org [mailto:plug-admin at lists.pdxlinux.org]
> On Behalf Of AthlonRob
> Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 6:09 PM
> To: plug at lists.pdxlinux.org
> Subject: Re: [PLUG] Email Legal Issues
> 
> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 17:49, Jason Van Cleve wrote:
> > Simple question for anyone who knows Internet law:  when, and for whom,
> > generally, is it legal to intercept and read an email message, that was
> > not intended for that person's eyes?  I'm in a trivial debate, so I'm
> > looking for the summary answer.
> 
> I'm not a lawyer, and definitely am not an ACLU fan, but I read an
> article by an ACLU goon a few months ago (which I have since thrown away
> when cleaning out old papers) that outlined this.  As I recall, it
> stated you are allowed, by law, to view personal emails stored on a
> system, but *not* personal emails traveling *through* a system.
> 
> Again, IANAL and I really don't remember the whole thing for sure.  But
> Google might be able to locate the article for you.
> 
> Rob
> 
I would be surprised to find that you could argue for presumption of privacy
if you send messages in clear text over a public network.
Maybe the same rules apply as for the phone network, but the Internet is
much more public and much less controlled than the phone network.
-chaz







More information about the PLUG mailing list