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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Sun, Oct 19th 2003 11:44pm





Woman Sentenced To Home Detention For Reading Other's Email

from the it's-a-crime dept

I've heard plenty of stories of people being able to intercept and read someone else's email. Now, for the first time, a judge has sentenced a woman to home detention for just such a crime. He originally planned to send her to jail, but decided she was better off at home, where she could take care of her kids. The woman had apparently been intercepting and reading emails intended for her husband's ex-wife. Her attorney suggested that there's nothing wrong with snooping through someone else's email because it was for a good reason (the woman was concerned about the welfare of her husband's kids). The judge claimed that intercepting and reading email is no different than intercepting and reading snail mail.

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  1.  
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    Oliver Wendell Jones, Oct 20th, 2003 @ 8:00am

    Snail Mail?

    I heard this story on CNN Headline News this morning and wondered at the time how the USPS feels about it's service being referred to as 'snail mail'.

    Sure, we've all referred to it that way for years, but never in a legal setting...

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Milnesy, Oct 20th, 2003 @ 9:43am

    Re: Snail Mail?

    Lets spin this off in a different direction as well. What if you chunked up a song and sent them in emails to someone else. Would the RIAA be able to find you? Since if they monitored your email, that would be breaking the law?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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