None of your emails are private. This fact has been re-affirmed by the IRS this week.
According to current laws, government agencies that wish to read your email do not need a warrant. This is justified because most of the time when you send email, you do not own the server. The current law is analogous to leaving a letter at a friend's house, then your friend's house gets searched. Because you trusted your letter to a third party (your friend), it is no longer yours. In the current trend of software as a service, this analogy does not work. Almost no on runs personal mail servers anymore, so this understanding of the law affects everyone.
No one seems to be happy with these rulings. Companies including, Amazon, Apple, AT&T, eBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Twitter all want the government to update the current law. This law even affects Stevens. A couple years ago, Stevens migrated its mail services to Google. At Stevens, there is confidential cyber security and maritime security. Many researchers inside of Stevens can no longer discuss their projects via email due to concerns of breeching confidentiality agreements.
This law can also prevent people who do not live in the United States to use email providers such a Google. Since Google is an American company, they are required to follow laws of the United States. If a man from France was to send an email via Google, they could read his email even though he has never been to the United States. This could cause a lot of people around the world to become uncomfortable using any email provider hosted in the United States. Unless this law is updated, it is possible that companies and individuals will begin to move their email hosting to different countries.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57578839-38/irs-claims-it-can-read-your-e-mail-without-a-warrant/
This is interesting that they actually admitted that they could do this without a warrant.
ReplyDeleteI personally always believed that my e-mails and anything I ever did on the internet could be tracked and possibly read.
I think its stupid to believe that they can't and won't be read by outside sources. Thats why you should always be careful of what you do on the internet.