What is the Wiretap Act?
The Wiretap Act is a federal law that prohibits anyone from intercepting most types of communication by any of the following means: tapping telephones, eavesdropping, or intercepting electronic means of communication (i.e. tapping someone's dial-up line, intercepting WI-FI communications). This law also prohibits sharing of any information gathered in this way.
What is the E-mail Privacy Bill?
The E-mail Privacy bill will fix certain loopholes in the Wiretap Act that allow ISPs (Internet service providers) to legally read their clients' e-mails while they are queued to be downloaded. This bill was conceived by Rep. Jay Inslee (D, WA) and three other Congressmen after USA vs. Brad C. Councilman, a trial about E-mail privacy. Brad Councilman, owner of a rare books distributor, authorized the use of a program that monitored his clients' e-mail communications with Amazon®, one of his biggest competitors.
The courts had to rule in his favor on the basis that his program only read the e-mails that were stored on the clients' ISP's SMTP (outgoing) servers. As the e-mails were not in transmission, but in storage, he was not intercepting electronic communication, which would have been illegal.
How Do These Laws/Bills Affect Me?
They help keep your private information private, but until the E-mail Privacy Bill becomes a law, your ISP can legally read all e-mails stored on their servers. The Wiretap Act was a step in the right direction, but to keep up with technology, it must be amended. This bill, however, does nothing to protect our e-mails from the omniscient eyes of the Bush Administration, since on a mere suspicion that you may be a domestic terrorist, police or federal agents can read your e-mails to discover any evidence (or lack thereof) to arrest you on, without needing a warrant.
What Can I Do to Keep my E-Mails Private?
It is possible to encrypt your e-mails so that only the intended recipient can read them. There are many ways to do this, one of which is by using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). PGP is a program and encryption algorithm that allows you to encrypt and sign files/e-mails so that only certain people (those who have your public key) can decrypt them. You can download PGP free from www.pgpi.com.
If you want to add more features to the freeware version, you can buy the commercial product from www.pgp.com. Another program that can encrypt e-mail is called Crypto Anywhere. It is designed especially for e-mail encryption and can be freely downloaded Here.
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
|
|