Email privacy a hallmark of a free society

As encrypted email services like Lavabit shut their doors, the importance of email privacy becomes even more clear, writes Neil Richards, JD, privacy law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, in a recent CNN opinion piece.

Richards

“E-mail privacy matters because our intellectual privacy matters,” he said.

“The ability to confidentially share ideas and information between friends, confidantes and loved ones is the hallmark of a free society.

“Our communications are the foundation of our political freedoms. They must be inaccessible to the government unless it can prove to a neutral judge that surveillance is warranted, which means more than ‘relevance’ to an investigation and more than mere curiosity.”

Read more here.