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Appeals Circuit Ruling: ISPs Can Read E-Mail
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jun 30, 2004 03:54 PM
from the odd-distinctions dept.
from the odd-distinctions dept.
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?"
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Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Re:Two words (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? It seems much smarter to start encrypting your email than to simply trust a private company to not watch what is done with their equipment.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Funny)
-signed Apeals Court Sysadmin
PS : Justice Smith: Zelda's email had some tech difficulties getting through, but what she said was:
She couldn't get the chocolate stains out of her purple tutu so she will have to wear the red one for the usual Thursday session. be sure to wear your fishnets and don't forget the whips.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course even in my earliest days on the internet i has always assumed that it was a given that the administrator can read any file on the system.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Like you said, it took forever for ssh to replace telnet, and that's a problem which system administrators thought was pressing. Nobody considers email, web surfing, IM, or whatnot to really be all that important, and so nobody's going to go to the trouble to secure it.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
From the point of view of a systems admin, I'll be honest. I look at users' email from time to time.
I dont see the big fuss here.
Then why post anonymously?
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
What an anal opening.
It has been my observation that those who are most interested in others lives generally have none of their own.
Those who have power will use it.
No, not all will, as you imply. Only those without any sense of decency, which is perhaps most sysadmins, but not all. Any admin who aspires to being a good man would not invade other's privacy because they're 'just fscking currious'.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Check this guy out. Study him, and those like him. You will find a similar trait, which I have observed most often in liars. Chronic liars think that everyone else lies like they do. That is key to understanding them. Likewise, this guy. He blithly goes on about how he reads other people's mail, as if it was a 'well, duh' situation, and as if ANYONE would do the same thing.
This shithead is like the liars I've observed. He thinks that HIS 'natural tendency' to invade another's privacy is the way EVERYONE thinks. Well, his mode of thought is certainly common, but it is NOT the way everyone thinks. He thinks otherwise, which is one of the reasons guys like this are so pathetic. I've been a sysadmin. The thought HAS crossed my mind; hey, I could read anyone's email. But I CONCIOUSLY decided not to. This is what makes HUMANS different from ANIMALS. Animals do what comes natural to them, like the shithead parent. Human beings, true human beings (in the Dune sense here) actually have control of themselves and can aspire towards nobility instead of wallowing in animalistic voyeurism.
Thank you for listening. I needed to get that off my chest. I'm just sick and tired of dickheads like the parent being the standard by which humanity is judged.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Postcards, however, are another matter. Unencrypted email is like postcards.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether the email is encrypted or cleartext, the bottom line is that you have to go to a lot more trouble to read someone's email than to read someone's postcards. And since email is sorted, routed, and delivered without human intervention, there *IS* a valid expectation of privacy.
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
My company's database probably contains your credit card information - I am ABLE to access them - do you think I should be ALLOWED to use it?
Let's face it - this court judgement is either a result of plain ignorance, or a lack of laws AND judgement.
Again a nice example of freedom - brought to you by Big Corporation America. Thank whoever, I am not living there.
Let freedom reign GW - June 2004
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Re:Two words (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you what though - If we start having people at isp's reading email from the First Circuit's personal email accounts and using any information they receive thats interesting and forward 'tips' to the LA Times and Seattle Times reporters and see how long this kinda garbage legal action continues.
I cant believe we have people this stupid working in our legal system...
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Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Isn't it about time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isn't it about time... (Score:4, Interesting)
Screw that. Use instant messaging. The reason why ISPs can read the mail is because it sits on their servers. Find an IM program that doesn't use a server to store the messages (i.e. I think that rules out ICQ...) and you're set. The only real problem then is packet sniffing.
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Re:Isn't it about time... (Score:4, Informative)
The list goes on and on...
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Re:Isn't it about time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Confusion
Complexity
Laziness
Cluelessness
For me its always been a tossup between complexity and laziness. None of my friends would know what to do with a GPG public key if it hit them in the head, nor would most of them bother learning how to use it. You got it right with "Inertia". Overcomming this is like pushing a black-hole up-hill.
-Sean
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Re:Because email encryption has FAILED (Score:4, Insightful)
And the people that need to be encrypting their emails wouldn't be leaving them out in the open before this ruling anyway.
Those that were concerned about privacy would have encrypted them or used their own service to deliver messages. I am *sure* ISPs are going to just love grepping through emails to look for whatever it is they are looking for.
I seriously hope that ISPs have something better to do than that.
[tinfoilhat]
If anything, this was funded by the RIAA/MPAA/US Government to find out the subversive terrorists at the expense of those people that don't send important shit in email anyway.
[/tinfoilhat]
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I'm confused (Score:5, Funny)
We don't need any analogies. (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need to say that this is like opening postal mail, or that RAM holding the email temporarily is like a modem caching the data. We don't need to compare this to anything to explain it.
It is plainly and utterly stupid and wrong.
Enough said.
Re:We don't need any analogies. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Implications for google? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait a minute (Score:5, Interesting)
isn't this irrelevant? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's clear text though, what do you expect?
encrypt it [gnupg.org]
Re:isn't this irrelevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fortunatly... (Score:5, Funny)
1) I'm not in USA;
2) I use gpg;
3) I'm wearing that t-shirt.
This is just as wrong as stupid: makes me remember how 2600 lost in court making links to illegal stuff illegal, when, after, others won in the same court prooving linking is just linking, not illegal (good for Google
It's frustrating when we clearly see that the laws are just bendable...
So the loophole is... (Score:4, Insightful)
So now the loophole is telecomms carriers can store messages, and by storing messages they're allowed to listen to them.
Of course, it's no use just to listen to a message to get info on what a subject is up to, it has to be stored for later use, so simply the fact of listening in to a phone conversation and recording it for later use makes it legal to listen to and store for later use.
bah
It'll never stand (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Excellent (Score:4, Funny)
cd /var/mail (Score:5, Insightful)
thanks for that
Let's make lemonade form these lemons (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
No problem (Score:4, Funny)
Stored, not transmitted? Voicemail is the same... (Score:5, Interesting)
This ruling would also mean that you voicemail at your cellphone provider is wide open to being listened to as well... Nice...
Lets be rational here... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This is insane (Score:5, Interesting)
Among other things, this means:
* Email, the dominant form of online communication, which most of us have regarded as fairly secure, is now grabable by federal authorities or police *without a warrant*.
* Your employer may now read all your email -- previously, he had to at least inform you that he was going to monitor your network traffic ahead of time (admittedly, including such a clause in the usage policy was depressingly common, but still).
* Free email providers like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google now are free to do anything they want with all the mail that you've ever sent or has been sent to you.
I'm sure that the EFF is scrambling to try and do something at the moment -- it'll be their most important case yet.
*IF* this is not overturned, it means that it is *impossible* to have legal privacy protection for any form of communication that is asynchronous across hosts. This affects a vast number of potential protocols.
This means that voicemail systems are *not* protected by federal wiretapping law. If you *ever* leave a message for anyone, your privacy protections are out the window.
It's debatable over whether or not this applies to web caching -- if police and federal agents can now swipe the content of your ISP's web cache (yeah, the transparent proxy that your cable ISP uses, even though you don't think you're using a proxy), they can obtain web browsing data without warrant.
This is the biggest argument I've seen yet for use of PGP. If you are not using PGP, you *have* no privacy.
Re:This is insane (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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slippery slope argument (Score:4, Insightful)
That's nice. So now they can use this precedent to listen to your voicemails.
And if we move to VoIP on the telecom's backbone, then they can listen to your conversations... since it is being stored in the router's buffers alone the way.
privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
it's email. there should not be any real expectation of privacy. deal with it.
Seems like it applies to phones too (Score:5, Interesting)
What about analog signal delay chips? What about digital phone systems that temporarily store signals in RAM? And if volatile memory is considered transmission instead of storage, what if they used MRAM in the future?
Others summed it up with "stupid", but "stupid" just doesn't seem to come close.
I'll bet some ISPs are madly looking at what they have that they could market to the tabloids. Anyone out there have some Senators or Representatives as clients? Publishing all of their email might get a law out quicker than you can say "stupid".
ISPs can read e-mail? Finally. (Score:5, Funny)
ISPs can read e-mail? Finally. Now maybe someone at an ISP will reply to the several dozen "One of your customers is sending me spam" messages. It's about time ISPs got around to reading e-mail.
Now to read the article ...
Okay Thunderbird, time to step up to the plate (Score:5, Interesting)
Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Score:5, Informative)
(1) "wire communication" means any aural transfer made in
whole or in part through the use of facilities for the
transmission of communications by the aid of wire, cable, or
other like connection between the point of origin and the point
of reception (including the use of such connection in a switching
station) furnished or operated by any person engaged in providing
or operating such facilities for the transmission of interstate
or foreign communications for communications affecting interstate
or foreign commerce and such term includes any electronic storage
of such communication;
and then later...
(17) "electronic storage" means--
(A) any temporary, intermediate storage of a wire or
electronic communication incidental to the electronic
transmission thereof; and
So, it pretty clearly states that wire communications includes storage incidental to the communication, such as the email temporarily existing in RAM on a system before being sent. Given that RAM is typically volatile, I don't see how you could NOT call it temporary, intermediate storage.
There are no exemptions that I can find in the ECPA that might give this scumbag a way out of this. Either the judges are smoking crack, or the prosecutors failed to use the ECPA properly. I suspect it's more of the latter, as even the dissenting judge said that "the law has failed to adapt to the realities of Internet communications." This simply isn't true, because it's quite well defined in the law. The law HAS adapted to the realities of the Internet, and the ECPA is mostly quite adequate.
Here's a mirror of the full ECPA text for those curious:
ECPA text [floridalawfirm.com]
Re:Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Re:Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [cctec.com]
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