‘Councilman’ email privacy case
p2pnet.net News:- A US First Circuit decision currently on hold but which, if released, could open the way for untramelled snooping on the Net, is being challenged by a group of public interest organizations.
Bookseller Bradford Councilman offered email service to his customers, configuring his software to secretly copy their incoming email from Amazon.com, a competitor, to his personal account.
This meant he saw the emails before the intended recipients, but a panel of First Circuit judges ruled this didn’t violate federal law, stating, “it may well be that the protections of the Wiretap Act have been eviscerated as technology advances.”
The decision was withdrawn on October 5 pending a rehearing, slated for next month December. The public interest organizations are arguing the decison should be quashed because it disrupts the traditional understanding of Internet surveillance laws and raises significant constitutional questions under the Fourth Amendment.
Accordingly, they’ve submitted a friend-of-the-court brief written by law professor and online privacy expert Orin Kerr.
The organizations are the EFF ( Electronic Frontier Foundation), Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), American Library Association (ALA), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Center for National Security Studies.
“If private service providers like Councilman can avoid the Wiretap Act’s criminal prohibition on interception, it follows that the government will also be able to monitor our communications without having to ask a judge for a wiretap order, says EFF attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis fellow Kevin Bankston.
“If the decision is allowed to stand, it will eliminate the Wiretap Act as the primary curb against private and government snooping on the Internet.”
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See:-
secretly copy – Wiretap law ‘eviscerated ‘, p2pnet, June 30, 2004
brief – EFF Urges FCC Not to Mandate Surveillance Regime on Internet, EFF, November 12, 2004
