Email and Privacy and how Cyber Law Protects User Rights Research Paper

Email and Privacy and how Cyber Law Protects User Rights - Research Paper Example After the discovery of the internet, electronic communication has rapidly evolved and hence the internet has grown to a complete unregulated and an unplanned phenomenon. The inventors of the internet and the World Wide Web never anticipated that it could lead to extreme undesirable consequences (Bazelon, 2001). The growth rate of the internet has been expanding at an alarming rate where recent studies indicate that the population of internet users is doubling after every three months due to the emergence of social sites as well as development of e-commerce. Many people are turning to electronic means of communication being offered by the internet, especially e-mails which can pass, store, and retrieve information from a database provide by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). However, as the internet becomes more useful day after day, it has been blamed on various sandals of money laundering, moral decay, as well as several legal issues related to privacy and hence the emergence of cy ber laws which contain all the regulatory and legal aspects of the world wide web and the internet(Bazelon, 2001). The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution deals with the issues concerning searches and seizures which may in one way or the other compromise an individual’s privacy and one case that involved such a violation was United States v. Warshak (Trout, 2010). Warshak was enjoying the reasonable expectation of privacy of his e-mails from his Internet Service Provider, Nu Vox until government agents compromised his rights by ordering the ISP to preserve and issue his emails without first obtaining a warrant which was to be based on probable cause, thus in accordance to the Fourth Amendment, the government agents had violated the privacy rights of Warshak. However, the agents depended on good faith with reference to the Stored Communications Act even though this exclusionary rule was not applicable in such a case (Trout, 2010). In another case involving United States v. Bynum, Mr. Bynum gave his information with the expectation that ISP would protect the privacy of his int ernet and phone subscriber information. However the internet service provider violated the Fourth Amendments by releasing personal information of Mr. Bynum to the FBI without them first obtaining subpoenas (Schwartz, 2009). Another similar case involved the U.S v. Councilman, in this particular scenario Councilman retained his client’s personal information especially his competitors through Wiretap in violation of the Wiretap Act. The interception and seizure without consent of his customers was contravention of the Fourth Amendment. Thus there was an urgent need to amend the Wiretap Act to have a broad definition of the word â€Å"intercept† to include electronic communication temporary in transit because the previous definition only encompassed the e-mails on electronic storage in computers. Congress amended the definition on 22nd July 2004 (Bazelon, 2001). Discussion During the case of United States v. Bynum, 08-4207, the court failed to accept the argument from the defendant that the use of subpoenas by the government in an effort to get subscribers information from his ISP was a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of privacy (Trout, 2010). The court ruled that there was lack of evidence that â€Å"†¦the defendant had a subjective expectation of privacy in his internet and phone subscriber information†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Later he voluntarily accepted that he had freely given his personal data to his ISP and phone company and as a consequence, he had assumed the risk that theses companies could reveal his information to the authorities without his jurisdiction (Trout, 2010). Additionally, the court noted that Bynum was capable of demonstrating a subjective expectation of privacy with regard to this information, and then the information was subject to reasonableness test.