CAN CLEAR TEXT INTERNET EMAIL BE INTERCEPTED?
Of course. Teenage hackers or adult thieves care little about disclosure statements at the footer of an email declaring confidentiality and demanding privacy. Fourth Amendment protections against government interception, as well as criminal statutes prohibiting the interception of electronic communication may offer little deterrence to an information thief. Motivated people, equipped with software to hack into a computer and copy email traffic are probably not deterred by the law when, in all likelihood, they can successfully and covertly capture whatever email they desire to see. Some experts believe that the “stealing” of email may be undetectable or simply not reported. These experts also believe that privacy cannot exist on the Internet. Others rely heavily on the Internet’s spaghetti-like architecture as evidence that interception would be too unlikely to warrant additional precautions. The ABA and Arizona’s official opinion on Internet transmission of email agrees with this latte
