Re: Legal Question about privacy

[Dave Dittrich <dittrich () cac washington edu>]

On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Dan Bernard wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 11:12:04AM -0400, Mark Hahn wrote:
> ..
> > Just to be perfectly clear about the subject of my post, it addresses
> > the rights of others, not the hacker, who have conversations with
> > the hacker. (The hacker himself, clearly a nefarious ne'er-do-well,
> > has abrogated all rights to privacy by his own actions.)
> ..
> In response to that, I'll stay close to my original supposition that
> if the communications were not supposed to be secure, then they are
> essentially open.

That is not what several lawyers have told me.  Just because it is
technically feasible to monitor some technology (e.g., 802.11,
cordless phones...) that does *not* make the expectation of privacy
go away, nor make it legal to monitor it.

> If said conversations with third parties took place
> over a secured (encrypted) channel to another network, then I suppose
> it would not be fair to deny the third parties their rights.

The use of encryption (or even passwords in an IRC channnel) show an
effort to protect the communications, thus increasing the expectation
of privacy in those communications.

--
Dave Dittrich                           Computing & Communications
dittrich () cac washington edu             University Computing Services
http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich    University of Washington

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