Slashdot Mirror
Where To Draw the Line When Punishing Email Snooping?
CWmike writes "While it might seem like a practical joke or a harmless, furtive glance, e-mail snooping could land you in more hot water than you'd ever expect — you could be charged with a federal crime. The recent case of a Philadelphia TV news anchor charged with breaking into his co-anchor's e-mail accounts shines a light on the seriousness of such snooping. Scott Christie, a former federal prosecutor who headed up the computer hacking section at the U.S. Attorney's Office, said, 'You look over someone's shoulder and read a personal letter and that's not a crime, so how can it be a crime to access someone's e-mail? It's not the same thing, of course... What you're doing when you're accessing e-mail is affirmatively exceeding your access to electronic documents and systems.' He adds: 'Usually, you're doing that by pretending to be that person to break into their account.'"
It's worth noting that the Philadelphia man accessed his co-worker's email over 500 times, and his use of the information he found was hardly harmless. However, the rules and conventions for email privacy are much less familiar to most people than the laws regarding snail mail. At what point does a privacy breach demand punishment?
Wasn't privacy declared dead some time ago? So, no punishment, I guess...
Just make the deterrent/punishment the same as accessing someone's paper mail without permission.
Sure, in some cases you have to pretend "to be that person to break into their account", in which case you might throw a bit of "fraud" at them as well, but in most cases, accessing snail mail and accessing physical mail are similar enough.
If you are reading something over someone's shoulder, they can tell you to piss off, cover it up or whatever. The difference is actually going to the mail box (whether it be physical or electronic) and accessing what is in it.
Oh yeah, I guess it might be slightly harder to prove that someone has accessed the electronic box (because they don't have to open any envelopes), but considering you should be treating email as you would post cards anyway... (That is, anyone between you and the destination can read it, unless you take measures to encrypt it or something.)
-----
Disclaimer, I don't believe the state should exist. However, my opinions expressed above are given on the condition that my belief is suspended for the time being.
I wank in the shower.
Sigh. They are NOT repeat NOT talking about looking over someone's shoulder, or a furtive glance. They're talking about logging into another's email account and making the (damaging) contents public. But hey, this sort of confusion is what I expect from journalists - doesn't matter if they work for the New York Times or the Daily Shopper, they're all pretty much the same.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Except that e-mail is not US mail. You're confusing law about the US Postal Service (so snail mail) with e-mail.
US Mail and E-Mail are fundamentally different. With snailmail, the government guarantees the timely and confidential delivery of your message, and it is a federal crime for a third party to interfere with that contract. Contrast that against E-Mail, where confidentiality is never guaranteed - consider every virus scanner and Junk Mail filter along the transmission path. However, when a third party breaks into an email account, a different crime is being committed - identity theft.
Laws that specifically protect US Mail should not apply to crimes involving electronic mail. The act of impersonating the victim should be sufficient for prosecuting the offender.
Sometimes shit just happens. Really. But most of the time that I see anything bad happen to anyone, they were doing something stupid. Something stupid that either directly caused the situation, or made it much worse than it had to be. That includes me, by the way -- if I have an advantage over others it's that I can admit this and see these things as lessons to learn from instead of treating everything as though it's random chance, as though my choices have no impact on what happens to me. Poor decision-making remains the number one cause of most peoples' problems, which is a good thing in a way because it's preventable.
Try explaining this to most people, though, and see how far you get. Instead of saying "the power to change things for the better is in my hands" they say "so you're trying to blame this all on me?!" and they completely miss the point. Even if you don't directly cause things that happen to you, there is such a thing as making yourself available and allowing room for things to happen. It's disheartening because the way most people respond to anyone who says this leads me to believe that most of them want to be victims. When that's the case, they tend to get what they want.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I'm glad you feel that way. And since you feel that way, can I have your email address, SSN, bank account# and any or all passwords you might have? Thanks dude! Oh, and I'll, um, share my info with you later...