Court reaffirms: Think before you email

By Joseph L. Raia and Michael B. Green
Computerworld | Dec 24, 2014 4:54 AM PT
 
A recent ruling is another wake-up call for email users in this post-Snowden era of email privacy — or lack thereof. It makes it clear that hitting the delete button does not mean that the email no longer exists or is no longer accessible. And it reaffirms the need to think before you put information in an email. Once it is written, you have already lost control.
 
In a decision that will protect the rights of email account holders to access their stored email and that will affect how evidence is gathered in civil lawsuits, a California appeals court has made two noteworthy decisions. First, Google cannot refuse to disclose email communications in a Gmail account in defiance of the account holder’s lawful consent to disclose the email. Second, courts can compel account holders to retrieve deleted email stored in Gmail accounts. Let’s see how the court came to make these decisions and the lessons we can draw from them. (A copy of the court’s full decision can be found here.)
 
 
full article