CAN THE RISK OF DISCLOSURE OF INTERNET EMAIL BE MINIMIZED?
Yes. The security of the Internet is a conscious design flaw. The Internet was originally designed not to provide security for email, but as a robust and powerful resource-sharing tool. The Internet’s predecessor, Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (“ARPANET”), began in 1969 under the premise that information on the network should be unguarded and available to everyone. When ARPANET was developed as a way to link major Universities with U.S. Government laboratories, all of the computer networks of the day were “open architecture.” In this scheme, email did not yet exist. All the users within these Local Area Networks were given free access to all resources on the network – there were no security provisions whatsoever. The first users were scientists and they quickly grasped the rudimentary (and extremely powerful) capabilities of the early generations of computer operating systems (such as UNIX). They were not concerned with security or with the attorney-client privilege. They t
