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A comment on IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant. Parent comment

Re:IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant by mpyne on Wednesday April 10, 2013 @09:46PM (#5529421)
Postcards are the better analogy for SMTP, not "opening postal mail".

With that said, it's actually a Federal crime to remove mail from someone else's mailbox to obstruct or pry into their business (even for postcards), which would seem to support your overall point.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1702

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Re:IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant by beedogs on Thursday April 11, 2013 @07:32AM (#5531220)
That's sort of my point, yeah. Think of your mailspool (protected by a password and login, at the very least, and oftentimes encrypted via SSL-IMAP or the like) as your postal mailbox and the analogy I was aiming for makes perfect sense.

Sure, it's easy to snoop emails in-flight, but once it arrives at its destination, it ought to be hands-off.

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