] Authorities charged Councilman with violating the Wiretap
] Act, which governs unauthorized interception of
] communication. But the court found that because the
] e-mails were already in the random access memory, or RAM,
] of the defendant's computer system when he copied them,
] he did not intercept them while they were in transit over
] wires and therefore did not violate the Wiretap Act, even
] though he copied the messages before the intended
] recipients read them. The court ruled that the messages
] were in storage rather than transit.

[ Is this total bullshit, or should they have gone after this guy under a different guise? What if the guy had a clickthru when people signed up that any email coming to that address may be read and that they have no expectation of privacy on that system?

Seems to me like he should have done the latter, if indeed he didn't, and that this interpretation of the law is exceedingly narrow, and wrong. But, of course, I'm no lawyer. -k]

E-Mail Snooping Ruled Permissible