E-mail Privacy

[Chip Yamasaki]

In <9tnh_wg at rpi.edu> rodney at sun.ipl.rpi.edu (Rodney Peck II) writes:

>In article <1991May30.203700.25025 at amd.com> phil at brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes:
>>None of the responses to this question seem to consider the fact that
>>the email which he was asked to retrieve was sent by the same person
>>who wants it. If the sender had made a carbon copy, this wouldn't be
>>necessary. But since the sender wrote the memo in the first place, is
>>this really a violation of privacy in the sense that the sender
>>would learn something he didn't already know?

>I think so -- since the sender didn't bother to make himself a CC, he's
>really just out of luck.  If I fax something to you as my employee and
>throw away the original, can I rummage through your office when you are
>fired to get a copy of the fax?  no.  How is strolling through the 
>backup tapes any different?

But he wouldn't necessarily have to stroll through the backup tapes. 
Certainly nobody could object to a script reading the mail.  It's just a
human reading it or data extracted from it that people object to.  The
sysadmin could write a script to search messages for only the one
selected message.  Then, when he is absolutely sure that he has
extracted the right one he has done so without "rummaging" through the
former employees mail.  This still does not answer the question of
whether it is acceptable, legally or ethically, to read that one
message, but it certainly does get that one message without and grounds
for complaint. 
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Charles "Chip" Yamasaki| The opinions expressed here are my own and are not
chip at oshcomm.osha.gov  | supported or even generally accepted by OSHA. :-)
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