dru
join:2000-09-14
Corona, CA
| reply to richb01803
Re: Blocking port 25? Privacy invasion!
Some of your fears and paranoia are misplaced.
As far as Carnivore, your this is a Clinton-era dream that has yet to pass through serious legal tests. To think that ISPs have welcomed or supported Carnivore is absurd. As an ISP, I can tell you that not only is there no Carnivore present on our network, the DOJ or anyone else has yet to ever approach us or any other ISP I know with the legal documents and court orders, and we would require substantial review before we would allow them to proceed. Apparently, they have to compensate the ISP T&M for any investigation, and that is probably never going to be practical when it would be easier to wiretap the client under investigation's phone or broadband. We would fight in court as long as clients, NOT under investigation, could have their privacy breached through the Carnivore implementation. Any use of Carnivore would have to be focused/targeted on a suspected individual. Despite the rampant concerns about Big Brother Snooping on You, the main threat was through inadvertent discovery, for example, if an agent tapping a suspected child pornographer comes across drug peddling by someone else, would that info be admissible or even be able to initiate an investigation? My guess is NO, it would NEVER pass constitutional law.
Secondly, as far as privacy is concerned, ISPs act as carriers. We SO MUCH do not want to ever see ANY of your email because that puts ISPs into a type of legal "publisher" mode. We simply send it, just as the phone companies complete calls without monitoring the connections for the same reason. Crime occurs all the time, but we don't want the responsibility of having any information that might require reporting to authorities. It could also make ISPs third parties to wife cheating cases, porno via email, solicitation to commit fraud, etc. Trust me, the microsecond we have confirmation your email is delivered to its destination, it's permanently deleted and we do NOT keep copies!
While there are all sorts of urban legends about AOL and other large ISPs trolling their clients computers and email boxes for anti-AOL rhetoric, complaints, etc, they are just stories. While there might be isolated incidents of snoopy employees watching what goes by, for the most part, it's just speculation.
The exception is mail transfer logs. We do log your mail activity (not the content) to ensure you are not spamming through our network, but also to verify that you are not. We have to keep these logs, because IP and mailbox headers can be forged. Best way to screw with a buddy (in the Sam Kennison definition of "buddies") - send out a bunch of er, organ enlargement ads under his IP and mail address, and watch the wrath of various entities come down, meanwhile, he says "HUH?" as cleanup fees hit his credit card. Ha Ha, I've seen it done!
If you want to be concerned about mail privacy - be worried about your employer and sending email out on the company server. In the issue of employer-servers and their employees with regards to using company resources, employers have prevailed in many of the cases to the point where there is no implied privacy when you are on the job. They can and do watch what you do. |
