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."

Comments

What if you use hotmail?

[jellybear]

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.

Re:What if you use hotmail?

[Tenebrious1]

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.

Sure you can. PGP can encrypt the contents of the clipboard. It's a manual process, selecting the text, encrypting (manually selecting the recipient's key), then pasting the encrypted text into your browser, but it's easy enough to do. You can encrypt anything with this method, including posts to message boards.

Stored Communications Act?

[spiritraveller]

You can read the June opinion here.

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.

Re:Kind of link not having curtains

[KarmaMB84]

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.

Re:Kind of link not having curtains

[Anonymous Coward]

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 EFF WAS involved as was...

[pdcryan]

...the CDT, EPIC, and the ALA. Here's their brief (in PDF).