Wire Tap Act Case Study

When the Wire Tap Act was passed, it only protected wire and oral communications, this is the reason why the Electronic Communications Privacy Act was enacted, so that the law protected electronic communications interception as well.

Councilman, as the president of Inteerloc, had the power to give the IT guys orders, so he one way or another received emails that were not intended to be received by him personally. Afterall his main goal was to intercept the emails to review the messages sent by a rival company. Because of this, he received a charge of using the code to intercept messages to gain commercial advantage. The Government sought to prosecute Councilman for intercepting electronic communications in violation of the Wiretap Act. The defendant pleaded not guilty due to the agreement with the Government that "the communications were stored on the
P.) This charge was dismissed by the District Court, narrowly reading the definition of "electronic communications" to exclude any type of stored information. Furthermore, the First Circuit Panel said that the emails were not "in transit", but were instead stored communications. Thus, because no intercept occurred, the panel held that the Wiretap Act could not have been violated. Later, in a Rehearing En Banc, the panel's decision was reversed by the full First Circuit. In the rehearing, the majority of the opinion, Judge Lipez stated that " the Wiretap Act's definition of an "electronic communication" subject to interception under the law "includes transient electronic storage that is intrinsic to the communication process for such communication"(Center, E. P.) while the minority argued that Interloc did not violate the law because "the Wiretap Act's prohibition on intercepting electronic communications does not apply when they