[PLUG] Email Legal Issues

Eric Harrison eharrison at mail.mesd.k12.or.us
Thu May 13 21:50:03 UTC 2004


On Thu, 13 May 2004, Charles Sliger wrote:

>> -----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

You might want to read up on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
of 1986. A quick search turns up these links: 

http://legal.web.aol.com/resources/legislation/ecpa.html
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Email_Internet_Web/ecpa_laymans_view.article
http://floridalawfirm.com/privacy.html
http://cio.doe.gov/Documents/ECPA.HTM

-Eric





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