Slashdot Mirror
Court To Reconsider Decision On ISP Mail Snooping
thpr writes "In June, Slashdot reported that ISPs can read email (according to a decision by the 1st circuit court of appeals). In short, the court felt it was not a violation of U.S. wiretap laws. Last month, the Justice Department asked for the full court to reconsider the decision. C-Net now reports that the court will 'reconsider its June 29 decision'. Arguments are scheduled for Dec 8."
Or gmail? Or yahoo mail? You CAN'T send/read encrypted mail. Sure, there's husmail, but they only give 32 megs. Versus 1 gig on gmail.
Say you're an ISP sysadmin, and you have a long time customer that you *strongly* suspect is a (very slick) spammer. After hours of googling, you manage to trace this individual all the way back to Spamford Wallace. We are talking about a VERY big fish here. They are not spamming from your systems or even using you as a drop box; rather, they have a shell account that they use to run a bunch of lynx processes that they use to monitor their spam sites and alert them when one is shut off.
Do you read his email to prove it? I did!
You can read the order for an en banc rehearing here.
One of the questions they ask the parties to argue for the rehearing is "Whether the conduct at issue in this case could have been additionally, or alternatively, prosecuted under the Stored Communications Act?".
Hmmm, I wonder what the Stored Communications Act is? It seems the court might be worried that the SCA (whatever it is) already applies to email-snooping, so that the Wiretap Act should not apply.
Correction, a mailbox you're paying for that someone else owns. I don't "own" the physical box at my local post office, but they aren't allowed to read all my mail on a whim either.
This opens allot of questions in mind how. Is this different from wire taping? We say that is legal as long as the partly gets a court order. Read this http://www.technewsworld.com/story/34965.html The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Massachusetts held that it was not a violation of federal, criminal wiretap laws for the provider of an e-mail service to monitor the content of users' incoming messages without their consent. I do not see a problem as long as they have a valid reason to do such a an act for the good of the people There needs to be laws on the net just as there are in real life
Read The Original Article.
At issue here isn't just "anyone" reading the e-mail--it's the ISP. Also, the people who were snooped were not the SENDERS of e-mail--they were the recievers. You can't encrypt someone ELSE's mail to you. Finally, this wasn't a case of "well, potentially anyone can read your e-mail," this was a case specifically of data mining e-mail for commercial purposes.
The original case had someone who ran a bookstore and also provided e-mail service to customers. He then SCANNED THEIR INCOMING E-MAIL for messages from Amazon, to see what they were reading. Not as a random snoop, but SPECIFICALLY to give himself a business advantage by knowing what his potential customers were interested in.
Consider the reprecussions if this is legal. Microsoft (or GMail or Yahoo) would be within their rights to 1.) ready your incoming e-mail, 2.) look for commercially useful data about your shopping habits or personal preferences, and 3.) act on that information.
So, under the original decision, it would potentially be available to scan your e-mail looking for, say, a confirmation for a flight you booked, then sell that information to a third party (let's say a travel provider), who could then start sending you e-mails about taking tours or booking hotels at your desitnation. As long as they copy your e-mail off a server our out of memory (read: don't intercept it DIRECTLY from the TCP/IP packets), this is LEGAL.
...the CDT, EPIC, and the ALA. Here's their brief (in PDF).
Ryan Kennedy opposes comm