What rights?
I believe that email should be treated just like snail mail. If the government can show a good reason why they need to look at emails, they should have to go to a court and get a warrant to look. Random scanning of emails is reminiscent of 1984.
Social media like Twitter or Facebook is a different situation. From a US perspective, when our Constitution and Bill of Rights was created, anonymous opinions were difficult or impossible to make. If you have a strong opinion, you should have the guts to stand up and acknowledge it and not hide behind a pseudonym. Our Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of speech. It does not guarantee the freedom of anonymous speech.
All social media should be required to have the names and addresses of all their contributors on file and accessible. That would cut down on the outrageous and false claims being made.
On another note: I’m glad to see that I can subscribe to a Kindle edition of Linux Format. I’m getting to the point of having trouble with the small print, particularly with pastel backgrounds.
Bob Ewart, Florida, USA
Neil says…
Random scanning of emails is the least of your worries. The entire contents of the trans-Atlantic ocean fibre optic backbone (as one example) is spliced off and copied as part of the Tempora project alongside Prism, Muscular and other cyber surveillance programmes run by the Five Eyes, and yes it’s entirely 1984, though I suspect the Powers That Be would say it’s all justifiable for state security etc etc.
As for online anonymity that’s a thorny subject. Many say killing online anonymity kills free speech, especially in repressed regimes, but also it wouldn’t stop rogue anonymous services springing up or people spoofing accounts. And as a curve ball, who’s to say any Bill of Rights is sound in the first place?
And we do try and avoid pastel colours but some slip through. It’s true the Kindle zoom function tends to be better than the human eye version…