"Everybody's doin' a brand-new dance, now"
A federal appeals court in California is reviewing a lower court's definition of "interception" in the digital age... The case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America, involves a hacker who broke into TorrentSpy's company server and obtained copies of company e-mails as they were being transmitted. He then e-mailed 34 pages of the documents to an MPAA executive, who paid the hacker $15,000 for the job, according to court docuWiretapments.
"I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now"
The issue boils down to the judicial definition of an intercept in the electronic age, in which packets of data move from server to server, alighting for milliseconds before speeding onward. The ruling applies only to the 9th District, which includes California and other Western states, but could influence other courts around the country.
"Jump up. Jump back. Well, now, I think you've got the knack."
In August 2007, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, in the Central District of California, ruled that the alleged hacker, Rob Anderson, had not intercepted the e-mails in violation of the 1968 Wiretap Act because they were technically in storage, if only for a few instants, instead of in transmission.
"Now that you can do it, let's make a chain, now."
"The case is alarming because its implications will reach far beyond a single civil case," wrote Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Friday. If upheld, the foundation argued, "law enforcement officers could engage in the contemporaneous acquisition of e-mails just as Anderson did, without having to comply with the Wiretap Act's requirements."
"Do it nice and easy, now, don't lose control"
Cooper's ruling also has implications for non-government access to e-mail, wrote Bankston and University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm in EFF's brief. "Without the threat of liability under the Wiretap Act," they wrote, "Internet service providers could intercept and use the private communications of their customers, with no concern about liability" under the Stored Communications Act, which grants blanket immunity to communications service providers where they authorize the access.
"Move around the floor in a Loco-motion"
Individuals could monitor others' e-mail for criminal or corporate espionage "without running afoul of the Wiretap Act," they wrote.
"There's never been a dance that's so easy to do."
"It could really gut the wiretapping laws," said Orin S. Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and expert on surveillance law. "The government could go to your Internet service provider and say, 'Copy all of your e-mail, but make the copy a millisecond after the email arrives,' and it would not be a wiretap." (more)
...It even makes you legal when they're feeling screwed,
So come on, come on, do the Loco Motion with me.
"Next stop!
Voicemails, ISPs, and bucket brigading of phone calls.
All aboard!"
