Sample Worksheet - Privacy, Spam and Encryption

• "The Two Timothy McVeighs," by Frank Rich, in The Denver Post, January 20, 1998 Pg. C-07.
• "Re: ETCS(SS) Timothy Robert McVeigh,USN," A letter to Navy Secretary John Dalton by David L. Sobel, legal counsel, from www.epic.org/privacy/internet, January 14, 1998.
• "Electronic communications: they may not be as private as you think," by William Bockanic and Marc Lynn, in Journal of Systems Management, November 1995, Vol. 46, No. 6, Pg 64.

Answer the following questions:

1. What is a constitutional right, common law, and statutory law, and how are they different?
2. What does the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) say about employee/employer e-mail rights and responsibilities?
3. What does the ECPA say about government/individual e-mail rights and responsibilities?
4. Why do you think the ECPA was written and do you agree with it's tenets?
5. Do you think America Online can be criticized about their actions in the McVeigh case? Were their actions ethical?
6. What do you think the court should decide in the McVeigh case? Justify your answer.
7. Suppose the government finds an e-mail message of yours on a seized e-mail server. Do you think they can use the contents of your e-mail message against you?
8. Suppose your university computing center head divulges private information about you that was obtained from reading your e-mail. Did your computing center head do anything wrong? If so, why?
9. As Justice Brandeis wrote, the drafters of the Constitution "conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized man. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation" of fundamental constitutional principles. Is this truth or just rhetoric?

• Anderson Consulting LLP, Plaintiff, v. UOP and Bickel & Brewer, Defendants.
• CYBER PROMOTIONS, INC. v. AMERICAN ONLINE, INC.
• Smyth v. The Pillsbury Co., 914 F. Supp. 97 (E.D. Pa. 1996).
• Bourke v. Nissan Motor Corp., No. BO68705.
• Other materials found from links at www.epic.org/privacy.

Write a summary of the case, outlining the positions of the litigants and the final court decision. Write an opinion of your own regarding the case and logically defend it.