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U.S. Court Finds Email Monitoring Does Not Violate Privacy Laws
In a controversial decision, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals held that criminal wiretap laws were not violated by an email service provider that monitored its subscriber's incoming mail without consent. The service provider was a rare book dealer that had configured its mail processing software to intercept all incoming messages from Amazon.com and to send a copy to the service provider's mailbox before the message arrived in the intended recipient's mailbox. The service provider was charged with several offenses including conspiracy to intercept and use electronic communications in violation of the Wiretap Act.
The defendant argued that the email interceptions at issue were in electronic storage and could not be intercepted as a matter of law. The District Court agreed and dismissed the charges. The First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling of the District Court, finding that Congress, based on the wording contained in the Wiretap Act, did not intend for interception to apply to electronic communications that were being stored electronically.
In its interpretation of the Wiretap Act, the Court followed a narrow statutory interpretation approach to the Act's definition of "electronic communication" in view of the Act's broader definition of "wire communication". In distinction to the definition of "wire communication", no mention is made in the definition of electronic communication of the electronic storage of such a communication. The Court found that the electronic communications at issue were in a form of electronic storage, because at all times the messages existed in Random Access Memory (RAM) or in hard disks or both, within the service provider's computer system. The Court relied on previous rulings that held that for a communication to be intercepted, it must be in transmission and not in storage. Arguments that the communications were in storage and in transit at the same time were rejected. Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Torruella stated:
We believe that the language of the statute makes clear that Congress meant to give lesser protection to electronic communications than wire and oral communications. Moreover, at this juncture, much of the protection may have been eviscerated by the realities of modern technology. We observe, as most courts have, that the language may be out of step with the technological realities of computer crimes. However, it is not the province of this court to graft meaning onto the statute where Congress has spoken plainly.
For a copy of the decision: