Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole

Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole
Mark Rasch, 2004-07-05

Some pretty sleazy operators are slipping through a hole in a federal wiretap law that arguably leaves your e-mail unprotected from snooping.

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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-06
Anonymous (1 replies)

I wonder how VoIP telephony fits into the view of the court, as all the packets there are also store and forward....

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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-08
Anonymous

Perfectly for the feds, I'll bet....

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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-06
Anonymous

Maby its time you start encrypting your e-mail as well as requesting that e-mail sent to you is encrypted....

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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-06
Anonymous

This judge must have no real understanding of how e-mail works. This suggests that if there were a separate server to collect the re-routed e-mail, this would constitue a wire tap. So, "Attention all criminals: use only one machine and you in the clear!" How silly!

One thing that this does rei...

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Data paths 2004-07-07
Theuns

In order to fall foul of this, it appears to me that the snooping party would have to be on the data path of the traffic - small mercy though that might be.
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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-07
Roger (1 replies)

This judge has managed to interpret a law in a way that clearly was not intended, by insisting on the so-called "Literal Rule" of statute interpretation. I don't know what the situation is in the USA, but in Commonwealth countries the Literal Rule is generally deprecated, and the alternatives:
* Go...

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Statutory Interpretation 2004-07-08
Mark D. Rasch

As a general rule, courts only look back at the PURPOSE of a law when it finds that the LANGUAGE of the law is ambiguous. If it cannot determine what a law SAYS, then it tries to figure out what it MEANS (context), and if it cant figure that out, then it goes to what it was intended to DO (purpose ...

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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-07
JoeT (1 replies)

"I am hard pressed to understand how e-mails could ever be truly "intercepted" in transmission under this law"

...A sniffer.

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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-08
Anonymous

The email would not be "intercepted" by a sniffer. The interpretation suggests that the transmission must be halted. Most sniffers I have come across are passive so there is no "interception" by strict definition of the word....

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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-07
Anonymous-NJ (1 replies)

soooo, this ruling means that if I want to tap a call (legally), all I need to do is to insert a recording device, and retrive the conversation at a later time, since the conversation is not being listened too by me during transmission, this appears A OK!!! (rather silly, isn't it!)

---H in NJ...

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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-12
Anonymous

No, not really. Inserting a recording device is pretty clearly intercepting the call in transit.

However, if you could get access to the person's voicemail box, that would probably be fair game.
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Close the E-Mail Wiretap Loophole 2004-07-11
Anon

I would assume it is more like reading a postcard that was sent out through a company's mail department. If you didn't put it in a sealed envelope, can the mail clerk who copies it to keep for company records really be "intercepting" the mail?

Always assume that if you are using email on a spe...

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