🚀 go-pugleaf

jaw@owlnet.rice.edu (Joseph A. Watters) writes:

>In article <huh?>, jpglori@srv.PacBell.COM (John P. Gloria) writes:
[...]
>I'm sorry, but there seem to be some confusion about the facts in your
>original post.  Wang worked for Borland International.  He had an MCI
>Mail account.  MCI is the electronic communications service provider.
>An *MCI* staff worker was closing the account, not a Borland employee.
>At least, that is what I read from your post:

>> Apparently when Wang resigned, his MCI Mail account was closed.
>> According to the paper, MCI Mail saves messages for five days and then
>> deleted.  All these came to light when a staff worker was closing the
>> account and "looked" into Wang's account and was suprised on the
>> contents of the messages.  This started court orders to search
>> offices/residences on both parties.

>The MCI worker is part of the service provider and is explicitly exempt
>from the prohibitions on reading another person's stored electronic
>communications.  Unless I seriously misunderstand how MCI Mail works, I
>wouldn't think that a Borland employee could close/look into another
>person's MCI mail account.  If the mail messages were somehow stored on
>a Borland system before they were sent out to/through MCI Mail
>(although the original post seems to indicate something else), if that
>Borland employee's duties are to maintain the mail accounts, then
>he/she is still considered to be part of an electronic communications
>service provider, because in this case, Borland is also a provider.
>Thus, again, according to the ECPA, what the employee apparently did
>was legal.  It doesn't have to be in any contract.  Given the
>information we on the net have, I don't really think that we are in a
>position to determine (or decide for ourselves) whether what the
>person did was illegal or outside his/her "rights".

But is it legal to have a sysadmin read user's email? NO!  At least it 
shouldn't be.  Even though MCI was carrying the mail, they should have
no right to read user's messages.  Then again, if he didn't want anyone
to read his messages, he should have deleted them before closing his 
account.  This may be a very interesting case.

One other thing.  I'm just responding to the above comments and therefore
don't know the whole case.  Could some kind soul send me the original
article?  Thanks.

-Mark


--
- Mark Komarinski - komarimf@craft.camp.clarkson.edu
[MIME mail welcome]
"You can do anything you want until someone complains.  Then you're screwed."
-Heard in reference to the FCC.