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Appeals Circuit Ruling: ISPs Can Read E-Mail
leviramsey writes "The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (covering Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island) has ruled that e-mail providers are not violating the law by reading users' e-mail without the user's consent. The decision finds that the Wiretap Act does not cover interception of communications where the communications are being stored, not transmitted. Perhaps OSDN should send the defendant, accused in 2001 of reading users emails in order to find out what they were interested in purchasing from Amazon, a T-shirt from ThinkGeek?"
More words: This most certainly has to be overturned on a privacy bill of some sort. Imagine the widespread mail-reading that is now determined -at least in the mentioned juridstictions- to be legal. I wonder what ever happened to the privacy laws and how they match up to this new ruling (the ones that say a conversation is deemed to be confidential and cannot be disclosed outside of the circle in which it originated?)
I completely agree with "And he acknowledged that "the line that we draw in this case will have far-reaching effects on personal privacy and security."
... to start using strong crypto for our email? The technology has been available for free for years now, so what's stoping us? Why this inertia?
If ISPs are not breaking any laws reading users stored email without consent, then why was there a huge fuss about Google using a parsing engine to do the same?! I would have thought that a parsing engine was more in line with privacy than someone reading your mail!!
I feel a tremendous schizm forming within the ranks of the American Legislature over this, with one side determined to force restrictions upon 'publicised' companies in an effort to make names for themselves, while the other side making rulings like this that will bearly make the main press. Something tells me not everyone is singing off the same hymnsheet.
Something died a little today. That something was common sense.
And to those who think encrypting your email is the answer - it's not. The email sent to you can still be read, and many sites like Amazon, which is mentioned in the article, send automated emails to whatever address you provide them, making your communications easy pickings for unscrupulous ISPs.
Of course, on the other hand, I'm sure some people here won't be surprised, and will in fact welcome such intrusion into their email, as evidenced by the enthusiasm here and elsewhere in geek circles for Google's Gmail service, which at least as intrusive and does the exact same thing with a user's emails (i.e. reads them for the purposes of marketing other products they think the user would be interested in). I'm still not sure what causes this cognitive disconnect in the technical community, but it is both puzzling and worrisome.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
grep -i -n -A 3 username * > password_list
thanks for that
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (covering Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island) has ruled that e-mail providers are not violating the law by reading users' e-mail without the user's consent.
In a way, I suppose, this ruling is a good thing, because it underscores the need for a comprehensive privacy and data retention law.
What's needed is something along the lines of The European Union's privacy law: that is, something that is explicitly mandated, rather then the "penumbras" of privacy that some judges can, and some judges won't, see lurking between the lines of the Ninth Amendment.
We can hope that this defeat in the courts can be -- with our hard work -- turned into a victory in the U.S. Congress.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
let me append this with the statement, don't put the government in a position to legislate something when we have the ability fix the problem ourselves.
Wow, that got me thinking. ISPs are not held liable for piracy, hacking, etc, because they are a "common carrier." Common carriers have no knowledge of the traffic they carry, they are simply moving things from point A to point B. That limits their liability.
Now, though, the court (in those jurisdictions) has ruled it is legal for ISPs to, at the least, read e-mail. Since it is ruled legal, and they are able, does that confer some responsibility to them?
Thinking this through to conslusion, what are the odds that the ISP defending itself in reading the e-mail, has in fact increased its liability in all things its customer's do and have done to them?
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Lets try to be a little rational here. I know that everyone is going to scream in the typical slashdot style about "invasion of privacy!!!!!", but lets really look at the problem.
The first thing is to understand what the Judicial Branch's job is. It is to interpret the meaning of existing laws! And looking at the law, it seems that they did a pretty good job of this.
So does this mean that I want my ISP's reading my email? Of course not!
The problem is that the legislative branch is not creating laws that keep up to speed with the ethical problems presented by technology. Lets not get on the Judges' cases for the ISPs reading our email, get on the LEGISLATORS.
In fact, I want to congratulate the judges in this case for making the ruling. Even though it is obvious that it is absurd that the ISPs are reading people's email, the judge did not overstep his authority by trying to create laws, rather than interpret them. This is one of the largest tyrannies that happens in US Politics, judges effectively creating legislation.
So here is a call to all legislators: GET ON THE BALL! New technology has created many new ethical dillemas, and we need the legislators to start dealing with them.
so is there anyone out there who actually thinks your email to me is actually private and won't be read by an admin of a server that queues it for delivery somewhere along the way??
it's email. there should not be any real expectation of privacy. deal with it.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
There's a minor problem with your argument. ISP's are not common carriers
http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/historical/00 10/msg00012.html
which most of us have regarded as fairly secure
True, if by "most of us" you mean "those of us who happen to be morons." Guess why nobody sends credit card numbers over e-mail?
Your employer may now read all your email
Most already do.
Free email providers like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google now are free to do anything they want with all the mail
It's a free service. They should be able to do whatever the hell they feel like. Read the usage agreement.
they can obtain web browsing data without warrant.
If you think an ISP wouldn't cooperate with the FBI without a warrant, then you are a moron. If you happen to piss off the FBI, they can (after obtaining the warrant) seize all your computers and network equipment for analysis. This will pretty much mean the ISP won't exist anymore -- they generally take a few months to a few years to return the stuff.
Sorry for not including citations of cases, but I believe the courts have held that email users have no expectation of privacy when sending mail over others systems (I think most pertained to University systems, but dont quote me). In fact, this makes sense- SMTP is inherently insecure, from a privacy perspective. If you want to compare it to snail mail, imagine mailing private letters with no envelope. Anyone between point A and B can read it. You cant complain if you later learn the postman read it when he was bored.
That said, you must take the case in context- all that was ruled here was that a (technologically speaking) ancient wire tapping law didnt apply to this specific case of email, because the message was stored in RAM, not actually in transport. If the company had been snooping on packets coming from *your* mail server, I suspect the result might have been different. Further, no other law was tested here- the case was solely over this wiretap law.
In a perfect world, no one would do this, and we'd all be sending encrypted mails anyway. What should be required is a privacy policy clearly stating the administrator's policy on email reading (ala Gmail), so that the educated consumer may choose the provider most suitable for his/her needs. If a company wants to read your mail in exchange for a free gig of mail space, I whole heartedly believe that to be within their rights, providing they are upfront about it. That this provider gave no warning of it was a non-issue as far as the case was concerned- only the wire tap law was ever used.
Given the context of the case in regards to the wire tap laws, and the history of expectation of privacy in email, this ruling shouldnt suprise anyone. What we should be doing is pushing for European-style privacy acts and some sort of required disclosure for service providers pertaining to email snooping.
I also dont see this as a danger to the common carrier status of ISP's-if indeed they ever had this status with regard to email. This ruling is very specific, and does not mandate that ISPs *must* read their users mail, only that if they do, they arent in violation of a specific wire-tap law. I believe what we have here is a judge who just refused to legislate from the bench.