Much of privacy that has been argued in court has centered around the expectation of privacy. A user has the right to privacy if and only if he can demonstrate an expectation of privacy. For example, someone cannot secretly videotape you in your home, since by the very nature of the home it has an expectation of privacy (or you expect that what you do in your home is considered private). However, someone can videotape you in public, since there is no expectation of privacy there (or you have voluntarily given up much of your expectation of privacy by entering into the public realm).
>BYU's right to ownership does not supercede my right to privacy. If I >use their restrooms, I have a legal right to not be videotaped by BYU >just because I am using their porcelain thrones. A landlord cannot >install a hidden camera in the bedroom of a tenant, and then pull the >argument ``aren't I allowed to view the actions of tenants while they >are in an apartment that I own?'' Just because I am using your >property does not give you a carte blanche to monitor whatever I do in >whatever way you see fit. In these cases you're right, since in the bathroom or in an apartment, you have an expectation of privacy that can be argued in court. I think email has lost so many times in court because of the nature of email. The comparison to a postcard sent through the mail probably convinced a judge that you voluntarily gave up any expectation of privacy when you used such a public medium. >We should not be so quick to turn on our backs and let the owners of >e-mail servers do whatever they feel like with our personal >information. Practically speaking, this can best be accomplished with >encryption (which was mentioned previously on this thread), but I will >do my best to avoid using servers that publish the fact that they >regularly monitor and read my personal e-mail messages. I wouldn't say boycott anybody, but encryption is definitely a good idea. With encryption, you can argue expectation of privacy, since you have gone out of your way to ensure your privacy, like putting your postcard in a sealed envelope. Any postman opening envelopes to read the mail is in real trouble since he violated your privacy after you took the time to reasonably ensure it. The same thing applies to email servers. If they take the time to crack your encrypted email and you can prove it, then it doesn't matter what privacy policy they post, they are in violation of your privacy. In the case of Carnivore, you would probably lose in court if you argued that the FBI/CIA/NSA was violating your privacy. Judges are notorious about ruling that one person losing a little privacy to help protect 250+ million people. If, however, you can show that Carnivore does little to protect the public, then you might have a case, but that would be a strong if, since the government just says "top secret" and they don't have to disclose any stats or anything to you. Sorry for the rambling, but maybe this helps ( at least one person out there) Tim Blalock [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ newbies mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://phantom.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/newbies
