Court: OK for E-Mail Provider to Read Mail

Those wacky judges are at it again. Tuesday, the Supreme Court squashed the Internet Porn Law designed to protect children from stumbling onto pornography. Yesterday, a federal appeals court said it was totally fine that a company that offered e-mail service tracked its subscribers' messages.

This decision came in lieu of a court case involving a now-defunct company, Interloc Inc. A former VP of the company was accused of ordering his folks to set up a program that made copies of e-mails in 1998 so they could review messages sent to its subscribers by their rival at the time -- none other than Amazon.com.

So how on earth did they escape conviction of the wiretapping charges? Ah the magic of the "loophole." Since the emails were copied while in "electronic storage" -- no real wiretapping ever took place. So by the letter of the law, they couldn't be held accountable.

You can bet that this is a huge can of worms just waiting to rupture and wriggle forth. Basically, this means companies could conceivably do a tap-dance around the law in order to rummage through inboxes.