Slashdot Mirror
Save a Chatlog... Go to Prison?
Alien54 writes "You are engaged in a chat session with some friends and colleagues, when one of them makes a witty remark or imparts a pithy bit of information. You hit CTRL-A and select the conversation, then copy it to a document that you save. Under a little-noticed decision in a New Hampshire Superior Court in late February, these actions may just land you in jail. New Hampshire is "two-party consent state" -- one of those jurisdictions that requires all parties to a conversation to consent before the conversation can be intercepted or recorded. The decision is the first of its kind to apply that standard to online chats, and the ruling is clearly supported by the text of the law. But it marks a blow to an investigative technique that has been routinely used by law enforcement, employers, ISPs and others, who often use video tape or othermeans to track criminals in chat rooms. This also has troublesome implications [for employers] monitoring of email and other forms of electronic communications."
I wonder if Hotwarg vs. the US from 1967 will have a direct bearing on this - it addressed a very similar issue for phone conversations.
If you had actually RTFA it says that ALL parties must consent. Sure, you can get consent from your employee that their communications can be monitored, but how do you get consent from the person they are communicating with?
Not so fast. The issue isn't whether or not the company was monitoring the employee's chat session, rather that they were monitoring the recipient of the employee's chat session. In two party consent states, it wouldn't matter whether or not the employee signed any agreement. The third party would have to consent to the monitoring.
The problem with this assessment is that, if evidence is taken in an illegal manner, it's not admissable in court. In some cases, all *sub* evidence gathered as a result from illegal evidence can also be ruled out. Fruit of a poisoned tree and all that.
C//
If the program has a "Save function" then the Judge ruled the user has a lower expectation of privacy than if the program doesn't have a "Save function".
The case at hand involved software that didn't have a built-in save function, but the cop used a camcorder and another software package to record the session.
--Rob
Did you read the article? It said that in Washington, a guy in an ICQ conversation got caught in much the same way, but by default ICQ comes with logging enabled, which the guy must have known, and thus, that was his form of concent of recording the conversation. So, apparently if your software does that by default, you're in the clear.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
But I could be using Trillian Pro while you're using AIM. You have no idea I'm on Trillian Pro, which logs chats by default (a wonderful feature).
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Well, it means that they'll actually have to get a warrant.
I have mixed feelings on these laws. On one hand, I do think that privacy is important. On the other hand, I was in a situation where I was receiving interstate harassing phone calls. I taped some of the calls, but the cops wouldn't even listen to them because both the state they were originating from and the state I was in are two party consent states. So even though I had proof that this person was calling me up and threatening me (specifically saying that if I didn't send her money she would tell the authorities that I had done various illegal things that I hadn't done, nor would ever even consider doing), I couldn't have used it in court, even in my defense if she had later carried out her threat. AFAIK, she never did and eventually she got bored and stopped, but it could have been ugly for me, to say the least.