Email privacy strikeout suspended | The Register

Email privacy strikeout suspended | The Register: "Email privacy strikeout suspended
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco in San Francisco
Published Thursday 7th October 2004 07:42 GMT
Privacy groups have succeeded in persuading a First Circuit Appeals Court to reopen a case with some nasty unintended consequences for email users. A June ruling inadvertently opened the door for spooks and Feds to snoop on email without a court order, but that's now been suspended, pending the hearing in December.
In US vs Councilman a court decided that when email providers made a copy of your email - even for a few milliseconds - the US Wiretap Act doesn't apply. The defendent, an email service provider who sought to examine the contents for commercial advantage - like Google with its new Gmail service, which scans the email so it can display context-based advertisements - was acquitted. The Wiretap Act required law enforcement officers to get a warrant to snoop on email. Since this was considered to apply only to electrons in transit, all of a sudden, they didn't have to."