> It does appear that the privacy of e-mail is only really brought into
> question when there is some intimation that the medium might be being
> abused. This seems to apply both in the business and individually private
> context.
>
> Attacks to access the contents of an individuals, or businesses e-mail,
> where there is no abuse appear to be only power plays between the different
> players.
>
> If that is so, then e-mail should be protected unless abuse is being
> investigated. The debate regarding abuse of the law or abuse of an
> organisations policies, which cause important perceptual differences, are
> only of secondary concern at this point.
>
> Does anybody have any examples which would counter the above view?
>
There are situations when it is necessary to look at email which is
unrelated to abuse, for example when a message is causing problems for
the email system, either by getting stuck or causing the email
software to fail. On occasions the problem has been content related.
However if the message is simply to big to be delivered normally, it
would seem prtfectly resonable to try to determine its nature before
deciding on an appropriate couse of action.
There may also be occasions when it would be useful to look at email,
for example to find messages vital to the completion of an important
project, funding bid, etc that the individual was dealing with when
they were unexpectedly absent for long periods of time (serious
illness/ accident).
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