Right or wrong - you have no right to privacy in your email

My friend Martin McKeay is back up and writing over at ComputerWorld.  Martin was under the weather for a while and glad to see him feeling better and blogging.  Martin writes today about the fact that under the Stored Communication Act (SCA), the government has had the ability to view email for nearly 20 years.  Having been in the ISP/Web Host business, I can tell you that generally, if a government official asked us for access to records we complied, rather than risking the wrath of the government. I agree with Martin, the ability of the government to read my mail anytime they wanted does make my a bit uncomfortable. However, right or wrong that is the way it is.

In fact, whether it be the government or your employer or someone else, you have to assume that any email you write can be read and used by someone else.  It is just a fact of electronic/digital life that we do not have the same expectations of privacy in our digital communications as we do in the analog world.  I don't agree with it.  I also am uncomfortable with the ease of access available to private information on any one of us on the web, but these are consequences of living in this digital information age.  Sure there are ways to shield your communications.  You can send mail through a server not on your ISP, but through some anonymous service, you can encrypt your messages in transit, you can wipe out your hard disks.  The question is how many hoops do you want to jump through and is it worth it.  I would bet most of us just don't care enough to jump through these hoops.  So, right or wrong, agree or disagree, our privacy being violated regarding our email is just something we have to live with I think.