Who Needs It?

What if the Postal Service were to photocopy all of your incoming and outgoing mail and store it for twelve months or more? Would you be alarmed? This is common practice for e-mail providers, including your network administrator and your ISP.

Email snoops can easily scan your mail for key words such as sex, marijuana, tax shelter, offshore banking, or just your company name.

And if you delete the email you've sent or received to prevent others from seeing it, you may be surprised to find out that this doesn't work. Many Internet providers and network administrators store incoming and outgoing email even after you think you've deleted it. This is exactly what happened to the Reagan and Bush administrations over Iran-Contra. Oliver North deleted electronic mail, but the e-mail lived on and was eventually even published as a book.

Email is as fast and casual as a voice phone call, but can be stored and retrieved with infinitely greater efficiency than paper letters or taped conversations.

As email traffic takes over an ever increasing share of personal communications, inspection of email traffic can yield more comprehensive evidence than just about any wiretapping efforts. Email tapping is less expensive, more thorough and less forgiving than any other means for monitoring personal communications.

Politicians running election campaigns, citizens storing tax records, therapists protecting clients' files, entrepreneurs guarding trade secrets, journalists protecting their sources and people seeking romance are a few of those who use it. Suppose you're a manager and you need to email an employee about his job performance. You may be required by law to keep the letter confidential. Encryption also helps secure online financial transactions.