Cleary, while accessing Hotmail from work, you have little expectation of privacy. Does this imply that your employer may now use your Hotmail password at ANY TIME to log in as you and read your mail? Moreover, under U.S. law, the FBI may be entitled to do what they did -- but they also broke Russian law to do it. If the law should be enforced, should not the Russians be free to abduct the FBI agents and try them in Russia? U.S. law permits such abductions -- see, U.S. v. Alvarez-Machain.

What the FBI should have done is to have respected Russian sovereignty, made a formal request for the information from the Russian government, and if no response was forthcoming, proceed along diplomatic channels. If the Iraqi government requested information for a criminal case in Iraq, would they be permitted to break into houses, offices or computers in the United States in furtherance of their invetigation? Respect for the law goes both ways.

Mark Rasch

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