Think Your E-mail is Private? Think Again!

Last week, a ruling by the US Circuit Court of Appeals, for the 1st Circuit in Massachusetts, crushed any privacy rights that you may have thought you had with regard to e-mail communications.

In a 2 to 1 vote, the court held that because e-mail messages have to pass through servers belonging to someone other than the person sending or receiving the message, causing them to be housed on these servers momentarily, that the company owning the mail servers can copy and use any e-mail message that passes through them.

A bevy of e-mail providers including EarthLink and AOL rushed to announce that they do not, and will not read consumer e-mail messages.

The ruling of the Federal Government’s attempted prosecution of Bradford Councilman, an officer of Interloc, Inc. (now defunct), in which prosecutors had alleged that Councilman had improperly ordered the interception of e-mail messages and violated federal law concerning the interception of wire messages. Councilman appealed and won in a lower court.

The Federal Government took the case to the US Court of Appeals, and lost. The appeals court ruling cited the fact that federal wire laws apply to transmissions that are always moving, such as voice conversations. Because of the short time that e-mail messages are housed on third party servers, the court ruled that these laws do not apply.

The ruling went on to say, "We believe that the language of the statute makes clear that Congress meant to give lesser protection to electronic communications than wire and oral communication…"

To protect your personal privacy, there are certain actions that you can take. Many e-mail programs offer encryption. You can send files as encrypted attachments. You can also setup your own mail server which, at the very least, will mean that the communications you send and receive are less exposed.

The bottom line here is that if a communication truly needs to be private, you probably shouldn’t use e-mail as a means of delivery.