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From: gnu@hoptoad.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.sysadmin,misc.legal
Subject: Snooping in peoples' email IS a violation of Federal law.
Message-ID: <2062@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Mon, 27-Apr-87 19:41:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.2062
Posted: Mon Apr 27 19:41:50 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Apr-87 01:35:07 EDT
References: <1128@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <1065@epimass.UUCP> <5553@eddie.MIT.EDU> <493@gouldsd.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
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Xref: utgpu news.misc:313 news.sysadmin:156 misc.legal:1108

Unfortunately this is true.  I tried to get the net stirred up enough to
fix it when the law was proposed last year, but either nobody complained
to their Congresscritters or they didn't listen hard enough, because it
was passed (Public Law 99-508, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
of 1986).  As far as I know, nobody has yet been prosecuted under it
though, so what it really means is not clear.


There is a section that says:

        "(g) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter
121 of this title for any person--
...	"(iv) to intercept any wire or electronic communication the
transmission of which is causing harmful interference to any lawfully
operating station, to the extent necessary to indentify the source of
such interference..."

which might cover cases like trying to find out who forged mail (harmful
interference with lawful stations?  I'm sure this section was written for
radio though.)

The original case, where a system administrator says he watched the mail
logs until a piece of mail critical to his lab came in, while the recipient
was out of town, is probably legal, but the wording of the bill is so fuzzy
it's hard to say:

	"(b) EXCEPTIONS.--  A person or entity may divulge the
contents of a communication--

                "(3) with the lawful consent of the originator or an
addressee or intended recipient of such communication, or the
subscriber in the case of remote computing service;

                "(4) to a person employed or authorized or whose
facilities are used to forward such communication to its destination;

                "(5) as may be necessarily incident to the rendition
of the service or to the protection of the rights or property of the
provider of that service"...

One of these three would probably cover the case.

ECPA, we didn't stop it, now we have to figure out what the damn thing means.
-- 
Copyright 1987 John Gilmore; you can redistribute only if your recipients can.
(This is an effort to bend Stargate to work with Usenet, not against it.)
{sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4,ucbvax}!hoptoad!gnu	       gnu@ingres.berkeley.edu