http://wired.com/news/print/0,1294,64043,00.html
This is no different than my postman reading my mail before he delivers it. It’s pure T caca.
I do realize that anyone familiar with unencrypted emails knows an email should be treated as a postcard in that anyone on the way can read it.
But for a court to give it it’s blessing just sucks.
The First Court of Appeals in Massachusetts instead of the Mass Supreme court.
The feeling remains.
Another reason to not buy from Alibris.com (in tandem with their jacked-up prices).
Hmm…the same state’s courts who said that There Must Be Gay Marriage Because Gender’s None of the Anyone’s Business now says that E-mails Are Readable Because They’re Everyone’s Business.
The court decision notes that the defendent also operated Valinet.com, an ISP based in Northampton MA (practically in my backyard!). A footnote reads:
While that may very well be true, if I were a customer of Valinet, I would be bothered enough by this clown’s ethics to find another ISP.
This is why we have encryption tools available. The end.
[QUOTE=Reeder]
This is no different than my postman reading my mail before he delivers it. It’s pure T caca.
[QUOTE]
The difference, of course, being that there is a specific law against reading other people’s postal mail while there is no specific law against reading other people’s e-mail.
See how it is actually different?
No, actually, that’s not what they said.
They said they’re readable because they’re in the man’s computer and there is no law against reading other people’s mail that’s on your computer.
See how that’s completely different than the drek you put up?
I think the Court made the correct decision as near as I can tell from that article. What needs to happen now is we need to all lobby and get the wiretap laws amended to include e-mail in order to overrule the ruling. But that won’t happen because it’s easier for people to bitch on an internet message board than actually take some time to organize and lobby for an issue that they’re concerned about.
And people wonder why laws in the country are so fucked up. Lazy bastards.
Actually, it won’t happen because there are too many people in Congress who support the idea of reading email on demand. Lobbying won’t change that. Remember, this is the same state with a Senator who advocated installing a chip in ALL computers to allow the gov’t to read any email sent by or through that computer.
Besides, as a lowly minion type voter, why should I bother trying to talk to my congressional delegation? I can’t even get my senior senator to fix a minor, but insulting, omission on his web site. I’ve only been complaining about it for a year, now.
And, erislover I’d like to point out that the chip being mentioned above was intended to specifically defeat any encryption that might be used on the messaging.
In what ways does this decision imply (or fail to imply) the legality of the following?
• I send an email from my private personal email account (via my ISP) to another person’s private email account. Both of us are on machines we own personally, in our own homes. Earthlink and Verizon, our respective ISPs, both start cc’ing any and all email that mentions their service into a special folder where they read it to see what their customers are telling folks about the quality of their service.
• Same two people except that we each buy our own dedicated T1 lines, being dedicated geeks, and we use sendmail or postfix or similar sw on our own computers To get from my computer to his, the email is relayed through several hops, and somewhere between my computer and his, one of the relay boxes is tapped by the people who maintain it and they read all email that mentions abortion, and they maintain a database.
• Same two people, same scene, except that they also scan for encrypted email and the IPs of senders and receivers of encrypted email are logged and passed on to an automated system that deploys an arsenal of exploits that gain control of a significant percentage of computers they are sicced on, and compromised computers are scanned for records of PGP private key strings which are then used to decode and read the emails.
Don’t be stupid. If the voters care to push the issue, the voters will get what they want. If the voters don’t care enough, then other people will get what they want. That’s how it works.
That’s why you enlist the services of other like-minded people. Quite frankly, during my time in Congress we got tons of mail - and this was just in a representative’s office. The legislator didn’t actually see most of the mail, it was the staffers. People’s concerns were noted, put into a database, etc. Most decisions on how to vote were a combination of gaining brownie points from other members so we could call them in on issues that were important to our constituents, personal morality on certain issues by the legislator, guesses on what the majority of the 600,000 people in the district would want, and cases made by lobbyists.
The lone letter here or there doesn’t make a difference because for every letter saying vote this way, there’s another saying vote this way. However, a community group gets attention from the representative very quickly and can have a big impact on how they vote on things. Especially when they go to the trouble of setting up appointments to meet with the representative or his/her staffers.
You seem to be missing the point. This isn’t a legislative issue. It’s not even constituent service. And I have met with his staffers about it. It’s an insulting omission on his website. It’s been there for years. I’ve been promised that it would be fixed several times, now. And it still hasn’t. It is a stupid little HTML idiocy he could have fixed in something like 8 minutes by his lowliest web tech.
Maybe he was just checking to see how many were emails forwarded so that the forwarders could win lots of stuff?
If they explain it to the common masses that way, they’ll be all for it, because it makes perfect sense.
:rolleyes:
I don’t see how that is possible.
Keyboard logger?
A slight hijack -
What are some recommendations of free (or cheap) encryption software to use with Outlook?
I’m not missing any point.
A) I’m guessing he’s never heard of you. So “he’s” not doing anything.
B) If you’ve met with them and they’ve heard from you, there’s probably a good reason they haven’t changed it yet. And they probably think you’re a lunatic by this point.
True, but it’s his staff. If he’s not responsible for them, who is?
And I’ve tried to avoid acting like a lunatic about this. It’s a simple piece of code. And it is truly insulting. And I’ve had the Senator’s staffers agree with me. And of course if I keep pestering about this I’m a frigging lunatic, and can safely be ignored. Which brings us full circle, doesn’t it? The Senator and his staff do NOT respond to their constituency. Which was what I was saying in the beginning, now isn’t it?
No, the Senator and his staff do not respond to one kook regarding some bit of HTML code on the website. That is not the same thing as what I’m saying.
If you were to get lots of people to care about that one little bit of code and to make their opinions known, then it would be changed rather quickly.
I was going to be nice and leave this alone. But there IS a good reason, and I know what it is. Senator Schumer has no Navy bases in his state, so there’s no reason to appear to give a @%@#&%^ about anyone from the Navy’s enlisted ranks. After all, the Military doesn’t vote in a block, anyways. Why waste time pretending?
Which does absolutely nothing for my faith in the Senator’s care for anyone else, either. I could make an issue of this with the local press, perhaps, but it’s not really that important. But this has been going on for two years, now.
I must be a kook to care whether Senator Schumer hears from enlisted personnel in the Navy whom he is supposed to be representing. Most of whom will be out of state, and thus have no way to meet him or his staff.
With that attitude, I will say I’m glad you’re no longer involved with Congress.