Example of Unacceptable Access

Privacy Laws in Action: The US Navy, America Online, and Timothy McVeigh

Timothy McVeigh just isn't a very lucky guy. Having possibly the most hated man in the entire United States as a namesake cannot be a good thing. And now, three years shy of retirement, with an admirable record to look back on, a customer service representative at the world's largest internet service makes a lapse that ruins his record, cuts his pay, affects his pension, and may yet get him fired.

While the majority of the controversy in the McVeigh case has dealt with the Navy violating its own "don't ask, donāt tell" policy, the case also raises significant questions about the privacy of online information. The details of the McVeigh case are very simple: McVeigh used his AOL email address of boysrch in an email to the wife of a Navy colleague. She then checked the user profile he had posted, to find that under the name "Tim", his marital status was listed as "gay". She then notified the Navy, and an investigator called AOL, identified himself, and was told the profile belonged to McVeigh.

The legal requirements governing AOL's disclosure of information are clearly outlined in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. It states clearly that:

. . . a provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service may disclose a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer of such service . . . to any person other than a governmental entity.

The case has a bittersweet ending. A court ordered that McVeigh be reinstated, and that the Navy obtained the information illegally. However, McVeigh was demoted, forced to take a pay and rank cut, and was then placed in a supervisory role in garbage collection. McVeigh was thrown out by AOL for "spamming", because he wrote a message to all AOL users asking for support for his cause.

The case raises a number of questions about online privacy. It is especially disturbing that a law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act gives permission to an online provider to give information from its databases about users out to the public It is unlikely that any other AOL user realizes that his/her information can be obtained by any member of the public with a simple telephone call completely legally. Recent statistics show that it is privacy issues such as these that keep potential users off the Internet.