Protect the privacy of e-mail

San Jose Mercury News: In a decision that both defies common sense and reveals how technology can leap past the law, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled last week that wiretap laws do not apply to e-mail.
If the 2-1 appeals court decision stands, all e-mail could be subject to snooping. Worse, Internet telephone calls, which are also relayed from computer to computer, could be subject to eavesdropping as well.
The court based its decision on a difference in how e-mail and phone calls are relayed. It said that because e-mail messages are stored temporarily -- sometimes no longer than milliseconds -- as they bounce from computer to computer between sender and recipient, they are "stored communications." Hence they are not protected by wiretap laws that prohibit eavesdropping on telephone calls, which are continuously in transit.
Therefore, the court said, an e-mail service provider had not broken the law when it read the e-mail messages sent to its subscribers.
It's time for Congress to again overhaul privacy law to reflect the realities of a wired world.
There is clear precedent for such action. In 1986, Congress realized that privacy laws had failed to keep up with dramatic advances in communications technology. As a result, "The American people and American businesses are no longer assured that the law protects their right to communicate privately," Sen. Patrick Leahy said at the time.
Constitutional guarantee
Congress wisely moved to overhaul and broaden an 18-year-old wiretap law to ensure that privacy protections, which are guaranteed by the Constitution, did not lose their teeth in the emerging digital world.
The same legal framework that exposes stored communications to snooping has other ominous implications for privacy.
As companies ranging from Google to Yahoo provide increasingly large amounts of free storage, their customers are encouraged to keep old e-mail messages ... online.