Orwell was 23 years off on his 1984-cast Feds turn e-mail into "see-mail" I know that by now it's the most overused introduction in the editorial world but what can I say - it's true: Everything changed on September 11th, 2001. In no area of life is this more starkly illustrated than in the realm of personal privacy… It has been a while since I talked about the "surveillance state" we're all slowly but surely moving toward in the Western world, but a couple of recent items I've accumulated over the last six months or so really paint a stark picture of where we're headed. Here's the first one: According to a recent Associated Press article, new rules approved by the U.S. Supreme Court last April - and that went into effect in December - stipulate that American companies must now keep records of all e-mails, "instant messages," and electronic documents produced, delivered, received or exchanged by their employees. This kind of legalized domestic spying is ostensibly aimed at greater national security and protection of the government's legal rights in the event of court proceedings on security matters. Sounds pretty straight and narrow, right? Maybe, but privacy advocates quite rightly surmise that the new rules also open the door for all kinds of heretofore uncodified cyber-crimes. For instance, an IT employee who overwrites a daily computer backup disc with the new day's files may now be guilty of a prosecutable crime akin to electronic "document shredding." The AP story also cites the bonanza of new billable hours that attorneys will now likely be able to charge for reviewing endless hours of e-mails and IMs about mundane office parties or personal gossip. Sounds to me like the lawyers win all the way around on this one. Just like with a lot of new laws… None of this is to even mention the personal privacy aspects of the new rule. What about personal phone calls and text messages made on company-billed cell phones? Do these now fall under the government's purview? I'm betting "yes." Welcome to 1984, circa 2007. | 
