4 ms·

I agree about some of your points, but I don't believe that you have any reasonable expectation of privacy when emailing a person you have never communicated wi

I agree about some of your points, but I don't believe that you have any reasonable expectation of privacy when emailing a person you have never communicated with before or that they won't republish your emails without first gaining your permission (IANAL).

Silhouette 16y ago
IANAL either, but in light of casual conversations with those who are: you own copyright in any work you create by default, including any communications you send, and furthermore there are expectations of privacy attached to many professional communications by default, though this varies a lot by jurisdiction and the nature of the parties and relationship or potential relationship involved.
- tptacek 16y ago
  You cannot claim "copyright" to prevent a reporter from publishing an email you sent them.
  - Silhouette 16y ago
    Says who? For example, has anything relevant changed in the US (which seems to be the relevant jurisdiction here) since this post by a lawyer in 2007? http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2007/07/17/legal-issues-in-forwarding-email/ http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2007/07/17/legal-issues-in-forwardi... A few minutes of Google-fu finds several essentially similar articles over the past few years.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      No matter how much you focus your nerd powers, you are not going to prove that's it's unlawful for a reporter, having received an email addressed to the reporter, to report on that email. Please stop trying.
      - Silhouette 16y ago
        You did read the article I posted that was written by a lawyer, right? Or spend even two minutes Googling for similar articles by other lawyers? I think one of us is trying to convince himself that he's right despite the absence of any supporting data, but I'm afraid you might be mistaken about which of us it is.
        tptacek 16y ago
        I'd respond to your article with quotes to point out how you're misunderstanding it, but I might violate its copyright and subject myself to needless lawsuits. (You can have the last word now; I'll stop being snarky in response.)
rboyd 16y ago
What constitutes "off the record"? Is it exactly and only those words? From Mr. Yavonditte's Twitter stream: http://twitter.com/#!/mikeyavo/status/48902730730844160 http://twitter.com/#!/mikeyavo/status/48902730730844160 "@EvilPRGuy the only part of email they didn't print was me saying that I was not willing to comment publicly - you live and learn" It's also pretty obvious that his response was meant to convey some intent to sue and not a challenge to a gunfight at high noon. Anything for some hits, I guess. Slap a custom wordpress theme on it and call it journalism.
ig1 16y ago
I don't know about in the US but in the UK it's certainly the case that there's a default expectation of privacy.
- Silhouette 16y ago
  As much as I'd like to think that's true (being in the UK and a privacy advocate myself) I've never seen anything that would "certainly" describe the legal position in this case, such as a precedent from a case in one of the higher courts. Are you just talking about something like the general privacy right under the ECHR, or something more specific to e-mail? I've found various opinions on-line from UK-based commentators suggesting that if an e-mail isn't explicitly marked or otherwise understood to be confidential, and it didn't contain any sort of privileged information or information that would normally be expected to remain private, then it wouldn't automatically attract protection under any privacy law. Most of these related to an individual republishing messages send on behalf of a corporate body rather than the other way around, though.
  - ig1 16y ago
    There's nothing email specific, although a company couldn't republish an email from an individual without breaching the data protection act. If the information in an email has no indication (explicit or implicit) that it should remain private, then I agree there's no legal reason why the recipient can't disclose the information from the email

Silhouette 16y ago

IANAL either, but in light of casual conversations with those who are: you own copyright in any work you create by default, including any communications you send, and furthermore there are expectations of privacy attached to many professional communications by default, though this varies a lot by jurisdiction and the nature of the parties and relationship or potential relationship involved.

tptacek 16y ago
You cannot claim "copyright" to prevent a reporter from publishing an email you sent them.
- Silhouette 16y ago
  Says who? For example, has anything relevant changed in the US (which seems to be the relevant jurisdiction here) since this post by a lawyer in 2007? http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2007/07/17/legal-issues-in-forwarding-email/ http://arborlaw.biz/blog/2007/07/17/legal-issues-in-forwardi... A few minutes of Google-fu finds several essentially similar articles over the past few years.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    No matter how much you focus your nerd powers, you are not going to prove that's it's unlawful for a reporter, having received an email addressed to the reporter, to report on that email. Please stop trying.
    - Silhouette 16y ago
      You did read the article I posted that was written by a lawyer, right? Or spend even two minutes Googling for similar articles by other lawyers? I think one of us is trying to convince himself that he's right despite the absence of any supporting data, but I'm afraid you might be mistaken about which of us it is.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        I'd respond to your article with quotes to point out how you're misunderstanding it, but I might violate its copyright and subject myself to needless lawsuits. (You can have the last word now; I'll stop being snarky in response.)

rboyd 16y ago

What constitutes "off the record"? Is it exactly and only those words? From Mr. Yavonditte's Twitter stream: http://twitter.com/#!/mikeyavo/status/48902730730844160 http://twitter.com/#!/mikeyavo/status/48902730730844160 "@EvilPRGuy the only part of email they didn't print was me saying that I was not willing to comment publicly - you live and learn" It's also pretty obvious that his response was meant to convey some intent to sue and not a challenge to a gunfight at high noon. Anything for some hits, I guess. Slap a custom wordpress theme on it and call it journalism.

ig1 16y ago

I don't know about in the US but in the UK it's certainly the case that there's a default expectation of privacy.

Silhouette 16y ago
As much as I'd like to think that's true (being in the UK and a privacy advocate myself) I've never seen anything that would "certainly" describe the legal position in this case, such as a precedent from a case in one of the higher courts. Are you just talking about something like the general privacy right under the ECHR, or something more specific to e-mail? I've found various opinions on-line from UK-based commentators suggesting that if an e-mail isn't explicitly marked or otherwise understood to be confidential, and it didn't contain any sort of privileged information or information that would normally be expected to remain private, then it wouldn't automatically attract protection under any privacy law. Most of these related to an individual republishing messages send on behalf of a corporate body rather than the other way around, though.
- ig1 16y ago
  There's nothing email specific, although a company couldn't republish an email from an individual without breaching the data protection act. If the information in an email has no indication (explicit or implicit) that it should remain private, then I agree there's no legal reason why the recipient can't disclose the information from the email