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From: cetron@utah-cs.UUCP (Edward J Cetron)
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: E-mail protected like U.S. Mail?
Message-ID: <4519@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Apr-87 00:51:10 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.4519
Posted: Thu Apr 23 00:51:10 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Apr-87 23:51:52 EST
References: <1128@cartan.Berkeley.EDU} <1065@epimass.UUCP> <5553@eddie.MIT.EDU> <493@gouldsd.UUCP> <1798@whuts.UUCP> <3550@cbosgd.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: cetron@cs.utah.edu.UUCP (Edward J Cetron)
Organization: Center for Engineering Design, Univ of Utah
Lines: 20
Xref: mnetor news.misc:309 news.sysadmin:146

In article <3550@cbosgd.ATT.COM> mark@cbosgd.ATT.COM (Mark Horton) writes:
->I don't have the references handy, but doesn't the Electronic Communications
->Privacy Act of 1986 (discussed at length on Usenet last year) do essentially
->what people are saying - protect disclosure of email?  Leahy was the (a)
->sponsor, and I think the number was something like S.1875.


	I obliquely referenced this is my intial (somewhat hostile) reaction
to Mikki (who has since come over to OUR way of thinking :-)  ).... As I read
it originally (and I admit it was some time ago) email was protected exactly
like any other data - it is the property of the 'owner' and any unauthorized
disclosure, snooping, spying... is illegal.  HOWEVER, notice the word 'owner',
the data is NOT necessarily owned by the individual user in the contex of the
ecpa but buy the owner/sponsor of the machine.  It gets very murky when the
user PAYS for time/disk space and such as to who the 'owner' is then.  But for
most corporate machines where employees get gratis accounts, or academic
environments where accounts are not charged directly to the students, my
interpretaion is that in these cases, the 'owner' is the corp./school.

-ed cetron