[Politech] Do ISP contracts let them monitor email? [priv]

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Mon Jul 12 2004 - 22:03:36 PDT


[Folks might want to check, for example, Google's Gmail policy at 
gmail.com, which says "no human will read the content of your email in 
order to target such advertisements or other information without your 
consent... Google employees do not access the content of any mailboxes 
unless you specifically request them to do so (for example, if you are 
having technical difficulties accessing your account) or if required by 
law, to maintain our system, or to protect Google or the public." 
Perhaps other e-mail providers and ISPs aren't as pro-privacy as Google? 
--Declan]


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Do ISPs' Policies Allow Them to Monitor E-mail?
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 10:10:08 -0400
From: Doug Isenberg <disenberg@private>
To: declan@private

Declan:

	First, congratulations on the new Politech website; it's very nice!  (And,
I know it required a lot of work.)

	Next, I read your post and column on the U.S. v. Councilman decision from
the First Circuit, and your reference to state law is interesting.  You may
have read a New York Times article about the case, in which the reporter
wrote: "Because most major Internet providers have explicit policies
against reading their customers' e-mail messages, the ruling would seem to
have little effect on most people."

	I wanted to see whether this was really true, so I went looking for these
"explicit policies" at the big three ISPs in the United States -- AOL, MSN
and EarthLink -- and I have my doubts.  Read my findings in the GigaLaw.com
blog entry, "Do ISPs' Policies Allow Them to Monitor E-mail?" at
http://www.gigalaw.com/2004/07/do-isps-policies-allow-them-to-monitor.html

Doug Isenberg
Attorney at Law
Editor & Publisher, GigaLaw.com (http://www.GigaLaw.com)
// Get FREE daily technology law news @ http://www.GigaLaw.com/news //




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