[BUGS] Assumed Privacy of E-Mails?

[Jerahmy Pocott]

Hello all,

Not a technical question here, not really bsd specific, but since many  
people here admin mail servers and such..

The question is about the privacy expectations of assumptions of your  
e-mail, okay so we all know that anything you send in the clear over  
the internet is pretty much not private, but we also pretty much  
expect that only the recipients are going to read our mail, right?

Now what about a company account? Do you expect mails sent or received  
via a company address to be private? Some companies I'v worked for  
have had clauses in their employee agreements like "while your company  
address is private, your mail may be viewed by system administrators  
inadvertently and will be surrendered if by court order" etc etc.. But  
others have had nothing.

Obviously I'm not a lawyer and don't really know the legal ins and  
outs of it, but if you haven't got them to sign an agreement and you  
went and read their mail or made it available to others or even just  
printed a list of the addresses they had sent or received mail to/from  
that would be some sort of violation of privacy?

Any thoughts or comments? (I'm not worried about being sued, more  
concerned about protecting the users from illegal privacy violations  
by the big wigs =p)