At 02:47 PM 7/6/04 -0700, Hal Finney wrote: >> Messages in storage have much lower judicial protection than messages in >> transit. (This does not have much technical merit, in the current >> atmosphere of "damn the laws - there are terrorists around the corner", >> but can be seen as a nice little potential benefit.)
Ie zero. >One thing I haven't understood in all the commentary is whether law >enforcment still needs a warrant to access emails stored in this way. >Apparently the ISP can read them without any notice or liability, but >what about the police? You are state meat, whether 5150'd or not. >Also, what if you run your own mail spool, so the email is never stored >at the ISP, it just passes through the routers controlled by the ISP >(just like it passed through a dozen other routers on the internet). >Does this give the ISP (and all the other router owners) the right to >read your email? I don't think so, it seems like that would definitely >cross over the line from "mail in storage" to "mail in transit". If you think the cable landings in Va/Md are coincidental, you are smoking something I've run out of. Its all recorded. I'm sure the archiving and database groups in Ft. Meade will get a chuckle out of your "the right to" idioms.
