PA Supreme Court Decides if Reading Email==Wiretap

An anonymous reader noted that "Excite is reporting that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is taking up a case to decide the question may police look at a suspect's email and instant messages without first obtaining a court order. The defendant, a former police officer, is also claiming his Fourth Amendment privacy rights were also violated. The outcome will only affect Pennsylvania but the issues at hand may eventually reach the US Supreme Court." Umm... Duh?

Comments

Re:duh???

[Amarok.Org]

I believe the "duh" was in reference to "The outcome will only affect Pennsylvania but the issues at hand may eventually reach the US Supreme Court."

Since both sides have such an important stake, it's likely that the loser will appeal it to the US Supreme Court. It will also affect other states even if it doesn't reach the US Supreme Court, since other states and entities will use (at least in part) the findings of Pennsylvania to support their own cases.

Re:Depends on how the IMs were acquired.

[base3]

The answering machine "beep" doesn't beep every few minutes when recording a conversation. It is just a signal to the caller to start talking, and not all answering machines/voicemail systems use a beep. It has nothing whatsoever to do with wiretap law.

The beep notification is for live conversations, and there is no expectation of privacy against another party for an answering machine message you leave any more than they can't turn over a threatening letter you might send to the police.

ewww!

[Psience]

I believe the government should protect people's online privacy. I mean, saying that any packet can be intercepted is an excuse to do so is like saying that all tapping someones phone is legal because all you have to do is install the approprite device. Anti wiretap laws exist for a reason - to protect privacy. So what if the internet is not considered 'private,' communication is communication and should be respected as private. However, The scariest thing here is that if privacy wins, a pedophile goes free. That should bother people much more than wondering if reading someone's email is legal.

Re:duh???

[monkeydo]

From the article:

Proetto claims police violated the state's wiretapping law by looking at the messages without first obtaining a warrant. Proetto also claims his Fourth Amendment privacy rights were violated.

The defence will argue that:

Since PA law requires the consent of both parties for private recordings the transcripts were not lawfully obtained by the girl. If the girl could not legaly record the conversations then the police would need a court order to do so. So sayeth the 4th Ammendment. The defence can also argue that the girl was acting as an "agent" of the police when collecting the evidence.

The prosecution may argue that the Police would not have needed a court order to intercept the email, making the "two-party" issue irrelevant.

It seems the question at hand is if the PA "two-party" law applies to email, if it does then there is indeed a search and seizure issue and the evidence possibly gets thrown out. If the PA court finds that it doesn't apply, or that it does apply but still admits the evidence you will see this case in the Supreme Court.

Different (earlier) coverage, more explanation

[John Murdoch]

Hi!

The AP wire article that Excite quotes was written by a reporter in Philadelphia, presumably after reading this story which ran in the Allentown Morning Call five days earlier. The AP writer makes a couple of mistakes, and misses a significant point--a point that is made well in the Morning Call piece.

• Proetto (the perp) is not in danger of going to prison over this. He has already been convicted, and is nearing the end of a six-months probation sentence.
• Proetto is bringing this action to avoid getting labeled as a "sex offender"--because sex-offender rules in most states have all kinds of onerous restrictions.
• Proetto lives in Whitehall Township, which is in Lehigh County, but works (or worked--whether he's still employed as a policeman appears to be in question) for the Colonial Regional police force in Nazareth--which is in Northampton County.

Re:But in Penn

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Degree degree degree. Forcible rape and statutory rape are two different (though obviously related) crimes, and are (appropriately) punished differently.

I got curious enough about this that I looked it up. In Pennsylvania, forcible rape is a first degree felony, with an additional ten year prison penalty above and beyond that normally provided for first degree felonies (if I read the statute right) while "statutory sexual assault" is a second degree felony with no additional penalties.

That still seemed a little harsh to me, so I decided to compare it to my home state. In Colorado, as far as I can tell from reading the not-terribly-clearly-worded statutes, forcible rape is a Class 3 or Class 4 felony depending on the degree of force and/or coercion used, while sexual assault of the sort the perpetrator in this case apparently intended to commit is a Class 1 misdemeanor. That seems a little more reasonable.

BTW, the jumping-off point for this information is here, a service of Cornell Law. It seems to be an excellent resource for legal research of this sort.