WASHINGTON-A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that companies that provide e-mail services can intercept messages before they are delivered to the recipient, a potential hit to privacy, warned advocates.
“It puts all of our electronic communications in jeopardy-voice mail, e-mail, you name it,” said Jerry Berman, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit threw out a wiretap conviction against Bradford Councilman, vice president of the now-defunct Interloc Inc. Interloc was an online company that sold rare books but also provided an e-mail service.
Councilman apparently told computer programmers to intercept messages to Interloc’s e-mail users from Amazon.com. At the time, Amazon did not offer rare or used books but offered to help customers find them, said the Wall Street Journal. He successfully argued before the First Circuit that because the messages were in the process of being routed, he had not violated wiretap laws that protect the interception and/or surveillance of communication.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Judge Kermit Lipez dissented, writing that the 2-1 ruling “would undo decades of practice and precedent regarding the scope of the Wiretap Act and would essentially render the act irrelevant to the protection of wire and electronic privacy.”
