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Think Before You Send:
E-mail Security Problems
by Justin Tyme*
In an effort to remove potential security problems with e-mail, Amazon.com initiated a "Sweep and Keep" program. Employees were encouraged to purge e-mail messages that they were not bound to keep for legal records. As a reward for deleting e-mail messages quickly, the employees were treated to free lattes.
When Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr released his supporting evidence in his presidential investigations, he included e-mail messages from Monica Lewinsky. Like most people, Monica assumed that no one would read her comments except for the person who was sent the e-mail. Monica's fears and frustration are evident in her e-mail note sent to a freind in Japan,
Writing for the Cox News Service Mary Beth Regan says, "Like many people, Lewinsky composed e-mail messages so personal and candid because she likely assumed that no one but her friends would read them. But unlike telephone conversations, which must be recorded to be preserved, e-mail messages automatically live on in computer hard drives -- even if people who send them don't realize it. For that reason, investigators are turning more frequently to retrieved e-mail as evident in court proceedings." Under federal law first-class letters, telephone conversations and e-mail messages cannot be intercepted (without a court order) during transmission.
A phone call unless it's recorded ceases to exist the instant a word is said. That's not true with e-mail messages. E-mail messages are stored and not just in one place, either. If you send an e-mail message, it will be stored on your hard drive, the recipients hard drive, possibly on an in-house server hard drive and possibly on the hard drive of an Internet service provider. Right there are four different places that an e-mail message could come back to haunt you. If under a court order, commerical ISPs are required to turn over messages for invesitgation.
Recently I had to re-install Windows 95 on my computer. It was done at a computer shop. When I set-up the computer again at home I was astounded to find that my saved e-mail messages had been replaced by e-mail messages that I had deleted over a year before. I was dismayed that I had to delete them again, but I was happy that there was nothing embarassing for the computer repair people to read and nothing that could be used against me in a court of law. E-mail just lives on and on and on.
James Dempsey, senior staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, DC, says, "People are using e-mail as a substitute for telelphone calls. . . But they are also creating records that are being used in civil and criminal proceedings." As I found out with my re-installation of Windows and the re-appearance of my e-mail records aren't always erased when you think they are.
The training video E-mail Essentials - Legal & Appropriate Use of e-mail carries this comment, "Organizations and individual employees are facing litigation arising out of the illegal use of their e-mail systems. Messages that employees thought had been deleted are being discovered in back-up tapes and elsewhere by high tech detectives and used as evidence in lawsuits."
Microsoft's Bill Gates found that out in the government's anti-trust suit against the computer software giant. E-mail from Bill Gates was shown to contradict his own sworn deposition.
So, before you send that off-hand remark over the Internet or your Intranet, stop and think it over. Maybe a phone call would be better. . . and safer. E-mail can prove embarassing, can involve law suits, can bring the president of the world's most powerful nation to his knees, and can harm other people. That's not bad for an easy to use communcation tool.
Before you send that "cute" remark, that scathing diatribe, or that "private" thought via e-mail, stop and consider what you're really saying. Even Tina the Tech writer in the Dilbert comic strip says, "One should never compose e-mail while one is snarling." How we feel affects what we say, of course, but there is even a greater danger with e-mail than offending someone. As e-mail writers you should think about what would happen if other people had your e-mail records, because they may retrieve them. While e-mail is a simple and fantastic way to keep in touch with friends and business associates it also has some security and legal problems attached to it.
"So it's over. I don't know what I will do now but I can't wait anymore and I can't go through all this. . . anymore. In some ways, I hope I don't hear from him (Clinton) again."
According to a 1998 Forrester Research report, 15% of the U.S. adult population (30 million people) use e-mail. That figure is expected to escalate to 135 million by 2001.
Oliver North erased 750 of 758 e-mail messages that involved him in the Iran-Contra affair. National Security Adviser John Poindexter also deleted 5,012 of 5,062 e-mail messages. All of those messages were recovered and used as evidence.
"E-mail is informal, so managers often say things that would never go in a memo. E-mail (often recoverable after deletion) is often as potent as a formal memo."
-- Paul Heylman, Employment Law Attorney with Schmeltzer, Aptaker & Shepard, P.C., Washington, DC
Tom Blanton, director of the nonprofit National Security Archive at George Washington University, says "The scary thing about e-mail is that it's got the immediacy of a conversation but the permanence of a letter. . . Generally, you don't want to write anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page."
E-mail Information Links
This great training source has hundreds of video and CD-ROM programs on communications, diversity, customer service, and many more subjects of interest to businesses and corporations.
Quality Today
This Website has information and links concerning quality in the corporate and business world.
Here is a list of helpful books concerning e-mail. Each is available for purchase through Amazon.com. Please, search for these and others with the helpful search engine following.
- E-Mail Security: How to Keep Your Electronic Messages Private
by Bruce Schneier - E-mail Companion; Communicating Effectively Via the Internet and Other Global Networks
by John S. Quarterman - Effective E-Mail: Clearly Explained: File Transfer, Security, and Interoperability
by Brad Shimmin and Bradley F. Shimmin
Justin Tyme is a professional writer and Internet reporter based in the Pacific Northwest. You may write him at saddleshoes@hotmail.com.
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