Thursday, July 01, 2004
Your Email is for Everybody
A Judge has ruled that the interception of E-Mail in not a violation of the Wiretap laws.
The wiretap law specifies that you cannot record conversations that are unstored, but does not provide protection for archived or stored conversations. E-mail, by definition, is stored conversations. It's an electronic message that is routed through computers and resides in storage files.
It's a disturbing ruling, in that it gives anyone the right to read your email. As printed and written communciation continuously is being supplanted by electronic messaging, it is clear that the Wiretap Law needs substantial revisions to meet the changing social environment in which it is to be applied.
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