Stupid disclaimers

Tony Arnold tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk
Wed Jan 18 20:03:53 UTC 2006


Eric,

Eric Dunbar wrote:

> E-mail providers have every legal right to view the contents of your
> e-mails. Some may promise not to and they would be violating contract
> law (if they spell that out in the TOS) but they wouldn't be violating
> criminal or civil laws -- anyone who forwards your mail for you along
> the way at some point or another can read your e-mail if desired.

Not in the UK, they don't! The RIP Act (Regulation of Investigatory
Powers) forbids intrerception and monitoring of e-mails! Companies can
do this for their own e-mail provided they tell all their employees that
they will be doing so. There are exceptions to this in order to
investigate a crime.

> But, the primary reason companies do this is so their mistakes or
> coverups don't get uncovered. For that reason alone these little
> disclaimers should be rendered invalid. Corps already destory internal
> communications as a rule to prevent their shennanighans from being
> discovered.

Which is why we now have the Freedom of Information Act, at least for
publicly funded bodies if not for private companies, but it's a start!

Regards,
Tony.
-- 
Tony Arnold, IT Security Coordinator, University of Manchester,
IT Services Division, Kilburn Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL.
T: +44 (0)161 275 6093, F: +44 (0)870 136 1004, M: +44 (0)773 330 0039
E: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk, H: http://www.man.ac.uk/Tony.Arnold




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