A U.S. appeals court has ruled that the vice president of an Internet service provider can’t be charged with violating federal wiretapping laws for snooping on e-mail sent to his customers, a decision that will give ISPs and other e-mail providers free rein to spy on e-mail, privacy advocates said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s decision Tuesday affirms a district court ruling dismissing a criminal wiretap charge against Bradford C. Councilman, who was vice president of Interloc, a rare book listing service, in 1998. Interloc, since acquired by another company, provided an e-mail service to book dealers who were its customers, and in January 1998, Councilman told employees to write computer code to read incoming e-mail messages from rival book dealer Amazon.com.
Source: PCWorld
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