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September 14, 2006
No Such Thing as Private Email!
Earlier this week, the Seattle-area had a host of angry (and foolish) emailers. A middle aged man posed on the Internet as an attractive female looking for good times. Apparently, several hundred men responded, some with quite explicit photos. No news there. But then the imposter published all of the emails and photos he'd received on public Web site. Quite of number of the respondents, some with good reasons to keep their interests private, were outraged.
We need to tell our students, one more time: There is no privacy in email. Once you send an email, the law presumes you have given up your right to privacy. Once it's sent, the 4th Amendment no longer protects you from government search, and, absent some other crime, you have no legal recourse in civil courts, either.
This means, by the way, that were I to tap the wireless signals in my classroom, and arrange the captured packets into sessions, I could quite legally read any email sent in my class.
The same for instant messaging. Once you send an IM, you have given up the right to privacy on the content of that IM.
(OK, there are some exceptions. Communications with lawyers, doctors, and clergy-persons are protected.)
Anyway, if my students do not learn anything else in my class, they will learn that they should never send an email or IM that they wouldn't be pleased to see published on the front page of the New York Times (or the campus newspaper).
Posted by DavidK at September 14, 2006 04:21 PM | Permalink