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July 01, 2004
So You Though Gmail Had Privacy Issues?
If you thought that Gmail was bad for your privacy and you better stick to mail solutions that would not threaten your rights here is something that will shake you a bit:
The First Court of Appeals in Massachusetts ruled that Bradford C. Councilman did not violate criminal wiretap laws when he surreptitiously copied and read the mail of his customers in order to monitor their transactions.
Councilman is an owner of a website selling rare and out of print books and as part of the service of his website he offered email accounts to his customers. Councilman installed a code that 'intercepted' and copied any email that came to his customers from his competitor Amazon.com so he could know exactly what books his customers were seeking.
According to the 'Wired News' report 'Authorities charged Councilman with violating the Wiretap Act, which governs unauthorized interception of communication. But the court found that because the e-mails were already in the random access memory, or RAM, of the defendant's computer system when he copied them, he did not intercept them while they were in transit over wires and therefore did not violate the Wiretap Act, even though he copied the messages before the intended recipients read them. The court ruled that the messages were in storage rather than transit.'
"By interpreting the Wiretap Act's privacy protections very narrowly, this court has effectively given Internet communications providers free rein to invade the privacy of their users for any reason and at any time," said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This decision makes clear that the law has failed to adapt to the realities of Internet communications and must be updated to protect online privacy."
In his dissenting opinion, which contained a detailed description of how e-mail works, Justice Kermit V. Lipez wrote that Congress never intended for e-mail temporarily stored in the transmission process to have less privacy than messages in transit. And he acknowledged that "the line that we draw in this case will have far-reaching effects on personal privacy and security."
Now, can I have ten Gmail accounts please?
Basileios Drolias @ Rugles Website Marketing
Posted by Basileios at July 1, 2004 01:21 AM
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