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Stored Email Not Protected by Law

Posted by michael on from the don't-think-that-hotmail-is-secure-either dept.

dbrower writes: "A recent decision reported by law.com shows your email isn't protected hardly at all by the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA). In this case, an employer was free to root around archives of old mail to nail an employee. The court ruled that the protections of the ECPA may apply to the mail spool and the transmission, but not backup copies of your 'Sent' mail. Well, maybe not all that astonishing -- relying on law to protect you from the BOFH at work was never going to work, was it? The message seems to be: send potentially incriminating mail from accounts not under your boss's control." Other courts have come to much the same conclusion. Once your email stops moving, it isn't a violation of Federal law to read it (although other laws could be violated in the process of gaining access to it).

4 of 12 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a second... by PimpBot · · Score: 3

    ...where does this end?

    AOL isn't my employer, but can they read my email? I'm using their services, and if I'm reading this right, they are w/in their right to read this...(I know they are technically capable of reading it anytime, but legally?)
    --------------------------

  2. Re:Right to Ownership by radja · · Score: 3

    And THEIR toilets, and THEIR webcams... ownership does NOT give you permission to spy on the people using it.

    //rdj

    --

    No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
    --Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
  3. Don't use company's equipment for personal at all by satch89450 · · Score: 3

    It may sound stupid, but the trend through four different Administrations (of the US Presidency) has been that employers have a right to anything on their networks, their equipment, and their building. So remember that anything on the company-purchased Palm, laptop, or desktop is (at least in a legal perspective) open to the boss.

    DON'T use the company hardware/network/infrastructure for anything personal. DON'T accept a notebook or Palm from the company -- buy your own, and transfer your company stuff to company equipment on a regular basis.

    That way, you avoid getting burned by workplace snooping.

  4. Re:Right to Ownership by markmoss · · Score: 5

    There are two scary aspects to this decision:

    1) It pretty much renders irrelevant the limited protections we did have against reading other peoples' e-mail -- you can't "intercept" it, but you can read it from the hard drive after it has been sent on. And while this decision applies to a company reading e-mail sent from its own computers, I don't see what will keep ISP's from reading your mail...

    2) The guy was basically fired for reporting his employer for possible violations of the law. If the court considered that at all, it's not in the news report -- but it should NEVER be legal to retaliate because someone called the cops...