Bruce Vielmetti reports on the decision referred to in an earlier blog entry here today:
David Szymuszkiewicz of Cudahy worked for the IRS in Racine. When his driver’s license was suspended over a drunken driving violaton in 2003, the veteran revenue officer worried he might lose his job. So he set his supervisor’s e-mail to forward all her e-mails to his inbox, according to the federal jury that convicted him in 2008 of three felonies under the Wiretap Act.
[…]
Szymuszkiewicz, 51, was sentenced to 18 months probation and appealed, arguing, in part, that having Outlook forward work-related e-mails to his computer wasn’t really intercepting anything, since the e-mails had already landed, so to speak, with his supervisor.
If it was a crime, it was more likely a violation of the Stored Communications Act.
As the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals noted a ruling Thursday upholding the conviction, “It is risky to defend against one crime by admitting another.”
Read more on JSOnline.com.
Related: Court opinion (pdf) Here’s a snippet from the opinion, which is an interesting read:
Szymuszkiewicz’s understanding of “interception” as “catching a thing in flight” is sensible enough for football, but for email there is no single “thing” that flies straight from sender to recipient.