tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/emails-2427/articlesEmails – The Conversation2023-09-20T20:06:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2086652023-09-20T20:06:34Z2023-09-20T20:06:34ZWhy do I get so much spam and unwanted email in my inbox? And how can I get rid of it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549270/original/file-20230920-21-1bu16q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=83%2C143%2C3910%2C2850&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Spam might not have brought an end to the internet or email, as some dire predictions <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-spam-could-destroy-the-internet/">in the early 2000s</a> claimed it could – but it’s still a massive pain.</p>
<p>Despite all the spam being removed by spam-filtering technologies, most people still receive spam every day. How do these messages end up flooding our inboxes? And are there any legal consequences for the senders?</p>
<h2>What is spam?</h2>
<p>The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted in 2004 “there does not appear to be a widely agreed and workable definition for spam” across jurisdictions – and this remains true today. </p>
<p>That said, “spam” generally <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/232784860063.pdf?expires=1693541947&id=id&accname=ocid177499&checksum=D0C5BDAC49951DF353618B8E38483253">refers to</a> unsolicited electronic messages. These are often sent in bulk and frequently advertise goods or services. It also includes scamming and phishing messages, according to the OECD.</p>
<p>Most people think of spam in the form of emails or SMS messages. However, what we now call spam actually predates the internet. In 1854, a spam telegram was sent to British politicians advertising the opening hours of dentists who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/09/why-spammers-are-winning-junk-mail">sold tooth-whitening powder</a>. </p>
<p>The first spam email came more than 100 years later. It was reportedly sent to 600 people on May 3 1978 <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080628205216/http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-spam11may11001420,1,5168218,full.story">through ARPAnet</a> – a precursor to the modern internet. </p>
<p>As for how much spam is out there, the figures vary, possibly due to the various <a href="https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/">definitions of “spam”</a>. One source reports the average number of spam emails sent daily in 2022 was about <a href="https://dataprot.net/statistics/spam-statistics/">122.33 billion</a> (which would mean more than half of all emails were spam). As for text messages, another source reports a daily average of 1.6 billion <a href="https://thesmallbusinessblog.net/spam-text-statistics/">spam texts</a>. </p>
<h2>Where do spammers get my details?</h2>
<p>Each time you enter your email address or phone number into an e-commerce website, you may be handing it to spammers.</p>
<p>But sometimes you may even receive spam from entities you don’t recognise. That’s because businesses will often transfer customers’ contact information to related companies, or sell their data to third parties such as data brokers.</p>
<p>Australia’s Privacy Act 1988 somewhat limits the transfer of personal information to third parties. However, these laws <a href="https://theconversation.com/accc-says-consumers-need-more-choices-about-what-online-marketplaces-are-doing-with-their-data-182134">are weak</a> – and <a href="http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/unsworks_75600">weakly enforced</a>. </p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-law-makes-it-illegal-for-companies-to-collect-third-party-data-to-profile-you-but-they-do-anyway-190758">This law makes it illegal for companies to collect third-party data to profile you. But they do anyway</a>
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<p>Some entities also use “address-harvesting” software to search the internet for electronic addresses that are captured in a database. The collector then uses these addresses directly, or sells them to others looking to send spam. </p>
<p>Many jurisdictions (including <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/s19.html">Australia</a>) prohibit these harvesting activities, but they are still <a href="https://www.projecthoneypot.org/statistics.php">common</a>.</p>
<h2>Is spamming against the law?</h2>
<p>Australia has had legislation regulating spam messaging since 2003. But the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2016C00614">Spam Act</a> surprisingly does not define the word “spam”. It tackles spam by prohibiting the sending of <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/s15.html">unsolicited commercial electronic messages</a> containing offers, ads or other promotions of goods, services or land.</p>
<p>However, if the receiver <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/sch2.html">consented</a> to these types of messages, the prohibition does not apply. When you buy goods or services from a company, you will often see a request to click on a “yes” button to receive marketing promotions. Doing so means you have consented.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if your phone or inbox are hit by commercial messages you haven’t agreed to receive, that is a breach of the <a href="https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/">Spam Act</a> by the sender. If you originally signed up to receive the messages, but then unsubscribed and the messages kept coming after <a href="https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/sch2.html">five business days</a>, that is also illegal. Senders must also include a <a href="https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/s18.html">functioning unsubscribe facility</a> in every commercial message they send.</p>
<p>Spammers can be penalised for breaches of the Spam Act. In the past few months alone, <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2023-06/commonwealth-bank-penalised-355-million-spam-breaches">Commonwealth Bank</a>, <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2023-08/doordash-penalised-2-million-spam-breaches">DoorDash</a> and <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/articles/2023-06/mycar-tyre-auto-penalised-1m-spam-breaches">mycar Tyre & Auto</a> were fined more than A$6 million in total for breaches. </p>
<p>However, most spam comes from outside Australia where the laws aren’t the same. In the United States spam is legal under the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business">CAN-SPAM Act</a> until you opt out. Unsurprisingly, the US <a href="https://talosintelligence.com/reputation_center/email_rep#spam-country-senders">tops the list</a> of countries where the most spam originates. </p>
<p>Although spam sent to Australia from overseas <a href="https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/s16.html">can still breach</a> the Spam Act – and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) co-operates with overseas regulators – overseas enforcement actions are difficult and expensive, especially if the spammer has disguised their true identity and location. </p>
<p>It’s worth noting that messages from political parties, registered charities and government bodies aren’t prohibited – nor are messages from educational institutions to students and former students. So while you might consider these messages as “spam”, they can legally be <a href="http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sa200366/sch1.html">sent freely without consent</a>. Factual messages (without marketing content) from businesses are also legal as long as they include accurate sender details and contact information. </p>
<p>Moreover, the Spam Act generally only covers spam sent via email, SMS/MMS or instant messaging services, such as WhatsApp. Voice calls and faxes aren’t covered (although you can use the <a href="https://www.donotcall.gov.au/">Do Not Call Register</a> to block some commercial calls).</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-generated-spam-may-soon-be-flooding-your-inbox-and-it-will-be-personalized-to-be-especially-persuasive-201535">AI-generated spam may soon be flooding your inbox -- and it will be personalized to be especially persuasive</a>
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<h2>Staying safe from spam (and cyberattacks)</h2>
<p>Spam isn’t only annoying, it can also be dangerous. Spam messages can contain indecent images, scams and <a href="https://www.cyber.gov.au/learn-basics/explore-basics/watch-out-threats/phishing-emails-and-texts">phishing attempts</a>. Some have <a href="https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/types-threats/malware">malware</a> (malicious software) designed to break into computer networks and cause harm, such as by stealing data or money, or shutting down systems. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cyber.gov.au/protect-yourself/securing-your-email/email-security/protect-yourself-malicious-email">Australian Cyber Security Centre</a> and <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/dealing-with-spam">ACMA</a> provide useful tips for reducing the spam you get and your risk of being hit by cyberattacks. They suggest to:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>use a spam filter and block spammers – email and telecommunications providers often supply useful tools as part of their services</p></li>
<li><p>unsubscribe from any emails you no longer want to receive – even if you originally agreed to receive them</p></li>
<li><p>remove as much of your contact details from websites as you can and always restrict the sharing of your personal information (such as name, birth date, email address and mobile number) when you can – beware of pre-ticked boxes asking for your consent to receive marketing emails </p></li>
<li><p>install cybersecurity updates for your devices and software as you get them</p></li>
<li><p>always think twice about opening emails or clicking on links, especially for messages promising rewards or asking for personal information – if it looks too good to be true, it probably is </p></li>
<li><p>use <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-multi-factor-authentication-and-how-should-i-be-using-it-191591">multi-factor authentication</a> to access online services so even if a scam compromises your login details, it will still be difficult for hackers to break into your accounts</p></li>
<li><p>report spam to your email and telecommunications providers, and to <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/dealing-with-spam#complain-or-forward-spam-to-the-acma">ACMA</a>. </p></li>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-lost-more-than-3bn-to-scammers-in-2022-here-are-5-emerging-scams-to-look-out-for-204018">Australians lost more than $3bn to scammers in 2022. Here are 5 emerging scams to look out for</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kayleen Manwaring receives funding from the UNSW Allens Hub for Technology, Law & Innovation, and the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre.</span></em></p>One of the first ‘spam’ messages on record was sent in 1854.Kayleen Manwaring, Senior Research Fellow, UNSW Allens Hub for Technology, Law & Innovation and Senior Lecturer, School of Private & Commercial Law, UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1974202023-03-16T19:12:12Z2023-03-16T19:12:12ZFriday essay: a lament for the lost art of letter-writing – a radical art form reflecting ‘the full catastrophe of life’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514610/original/file-20230310-24-eiamcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5745%2C3359&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Suzy Hazelwood/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Letters did not count [as writing]. A woman might write letters while sitting by her father’s sick-bed. She could write them by the fire while the men talked without disturbing them. The strange thing is, I thought, turning over the pages of Dorothy’s letters, what a gift that untaught and solitary girl had for the framing of a sentence, for the fashioning of a scene. </p>
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<p>— Virginia Woolf, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/a-room-of-ones-own-9780241436288">A Room of One’s Own</a> </p>
<p>Last year I went to the funeral of a friend with whom I shared a house in Melbourne in the early 1990s. While I and my other housemates went on to the full array of box-ticking life experiences – children, careers, relationships, houses – our friend was diagnosed with an aggressive form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-multiple-sclerosis-32662">multiple sclerosis</a> in her early twenties. When she died, we had not heard her voice for many years.</p>
<p>Of all the eulogies at her funeral, the most arresting was a letter she’d written at 23, read aloud by a former housemate, Delia. Our friend had been travelling at the time; negotiating a fledgling relationship, digesting the reality of her diagnosis, preparing for the suddenly precarious unfolding of her life. </p>
<p>She hadn’t spoken for so long but here in this letter, this imprint of her voice on paper, she sprang suddenly into life. Funny, irreverent, honest, scared: we could hear her. The occasion was sad; but the letter was joyful. </p>
<p>I had forgotten what a powerful time capsule a letter could be.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/post-apocalypse-the-end-of-daily-letter-deliveries-is-in-sight-201094">Post apocalypse: the end of daily letter deliveries is in sight</a>
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<p>Gen X-ers occupy a distinctly precious cultural position – straddling the analogue past of letter writing and the hyper-digital present of TikTok and Instagram. One of my earliest school memories is of learning how to transcribe an address onto an envelope in the form required by post offices (carefully indented at every line, return address on the back). It seems almost archaic now. </p>
<p>We may not have been “the last generation of devoted letter writers” – that title goes to our parents’ or grandparents’ generation – but letter-writing was still a necessary, carefully taught skill when we were growing up. </p>
<p>It was the normal way to communicate with grandparents, international pen-pals, and school friends who had moved to the country. We all sat down at school camp on the first night and wrote our parents a letter, Camp Granada style, supervised by prowling teachers who made sure we gave our parents a worthy account.</p>
<p>I remember too how important it was, as a young adult in the world of pre-internet travel, to land in a far-flung place, track down the <a href="https://www.travellerspoint.com/forum.cfm?thread=4494">Poste Restante</a> and find miraculously waiting for you – as though your arrival was predestined – a handful of pale blue aerograms, enscripted with miniscule, space-saving writing. Letters from home. </p>
<p>In momentary deferral to the anti-hoarding gods, I recently threw out a tranche of these aerograms, sent to me when I travelled India as a 19-year-old. I not only curse myself when I think of this now, but I feel an actual pain in my chest. What insights have I lost into my former self, my family and my friends as a result?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515056/original/file-20230314-2601-qqk3ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Young woman looking at camera, river and buildings behind her" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515056/original/file-20230314-2601-qqk3ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515056/original/file-20230314-2601-qqk3ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515056/original/file-20230314-2601-qqk3ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515056/original/file-20230314-2601-qqk3ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515056/original/file-20230314-2601-qqk3ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515056/original/file-20230314-2601-qqk3ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515056/original/file-20230314-2601-qqk3ao.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The author in India, aged 19 – when letters from home were miraculous and important arrivals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>The human condition</h2>
<p>The disappearance of letter-writing from Western cultural life is such a recent phenomenon that I don’t dare proclaim its death. From Abelard and Heloise’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-letters-of-abelard-and-heloise-9780140448993">12th-century love missives</a>, dense with biblical references but no less dense with longing, to <a href="https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/art-and-stories/stories/van-goghs-letters">the letters</a> of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, it’s hard to imagine how we might have made sense of the human condition without the insights gleaned from letters.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515059/original/file-20230314-2080-scd0kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A letter with writing and a sketch of a house" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515059/original/file-20230314-2080-scd0kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515059/original/file-20230314-2080-scd0kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515059/original/file-20230314-2080-scd0kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515059/original/file-20230314-2080-scd0kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515059/original/file-20230314-2080-scd0kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515059/original/file-20230314-2080-scd0kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515059/original/file-20230314-2080-scd0kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/Van Gogh Museum</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>What would we know of the interior worlds of artists and writers, scientists and politicians, sisters and friends and lovers? What would we know about life itself? Or, as importantly, about <em>how to live</em>? In the first century AD, Seneca articulated his philosophy of <a href="https://theconversation.com/stoicism-5-0-the-unlikely-21st-century-reboot-of-an-ancient-philosophy-80986">stoicism</a> via a series of 124 “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius">moral letters</a>” to his young friend Lucilius. </p>
<p>These letters are only nominally a private correspondence between two men; in fact, they were written for a much larger readership that might benefit from Seneca’s solutions to the moral dilemmas of living in the world. </p>
<p>Even if one side of the conversation (Lucilius’s) remained unheard, the letter, as a form, lent a sense of reciprocity and intimacy to Seneca’s words – it enabled him to speak to many as though he were speaking to one. With titles such as “On saving time”, “On old age and death”, “On the relativity of fame”, “On care of health and peace of mind”, Seneca’s letters continue to resonate 2,000 years later. </p>
<p>Rainer Maria Rilke’s ten <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/letters-to-a-young-poet-9780241252055">Letters to a Young Poet</a>, written in 1903-08 and published posthumously in 1929, provided creative guidance to his young recipient, a Czech poet and military student. These letters are famous for Rilke’s inordinately gentle manner, his tenderness and warmth. </p>
<p>Yet it seems that, in breathing a philosophy of art and life into the ear of his young admirer, Rilke also breathes it affirmingly into himself, and into the generations privy to the correspondence since. I noticed traces of his philosophy of creativity – which emphasises patience and attentiveness to the small things of life – in a 1961 letter from Patrick White to Thea Astley I recently read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Read, think & listen to silence, & shell the peas … concentrating on the work in hand until you know what it is to be a pea — and drudge at the school, & sleep with your husband & bring up your child. That is what I mean when I say “living” …</p>
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<p>Unlike the essay or the novel, letters facilitate a kind of collapsing of low and high, profound and profane, the life of domesticity and the life of the spirit. They are not master accounts of ourselves, with all the incidentals written out.</p>
<p>Writer Maria Popova, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/floating-worlds-edward-goreys-never-before-seen-letters/245155/">commenting on</a> the mid-century correspondence of illustrator <a href="https://www.edwardgoreyhouse.org/">Edward Gorey</a> and author <a href="https://library.sdsu.edu/scua/sdsu-oral-histories/neumeyer">Peter F. Neumeyer</a>, says the two men wrote to each other of everything “from metaphysics to pancake recipes”. </p>
<p>This democratic levelling of subject matter is perhaps nowhere more evident than in letters, where hierarchies of value don’t prevail as they do in more authoritatively literary forms: the traditional novel, for instance, in which everything must gear toward thematic and narrative resolution. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515108/original/file-20230314-166-o0riwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515108/original/file-20230314-166-o0riwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515108/original/file-20230314-166-o0riwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515108/original/file-20230314-166-o0riwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515108/original/file-20230314-166-o0riwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515108/original/file-20230314-166-o0riwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515108/original/file-20230314-166-o0riwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515108/original/file-20230314-166-o0riwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Gorey and collaborator Peter F. Nuemeyer wrote to each other of ‘everything from metaphysics to pancake recipes’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Letting the real world in</h2>
<p>Megan O’Grady, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/t-magazine/literary-letter-collections.html">in the New York Times</a>, has described letters as “leaky” in the way they allow a seepage of the real world to occur: “the baby wakes from the nap and cries; the air-raid siren sounds; the social mores and psychodynamics of other eras filter in”. In correspondence, even the rhetorical devices of transition, the elegant segues that smooth a jagged change of subject, are largely dispensed with. </p>
<p>No one, writing a letter, agonises over the wording of a sentence that links two paragraphs. A trail of unexplained ellipses has a particular function in a letter – to break a chain of thought, to attest to bodily movement in temporal space: a kettle being put on, a doorbell answered, a nappy changed. </p>
<p>My friend Delia, reading over letters from her friends in the early 1990s when she was a student in America, said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was funny reading these letters back. Sometimes they would be written over days, or even weeks, they’d stop and start and stop again: “Sorry, got distracted with something. Anyway …” Or be continually updated: “Well, I finally got a phone call from X, you won’t believe what happened …” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>They were provisional, real-time, patched-together accounts of life as we lived it, as it occurred, on the spot. An unspooling of self onto the page in real time.</p>
<p>Or selves perhaps; each letter, each recipient, facilitating an adjustment of the self, a tweak: there’s the correspondent we make laugh, the correspondent we confide in, the correspondent to whom we offer advice and comfort. Like a diary, a letter can function as a “chronicle of [one’s] hours and days”, but because it is, in essence, a two-way communication – an ongoing, unfinished conversation – a letter invokes a relationship so it needs to be sensitive to the reader in ways a diary need not. </p>
<p>It needs to configure itself for entertainment value. It’s one of the few writing forms that allows the mind of the writer to roam freely, independently, and yet actively connect with an attentive, and presumably sympathetic, reader: a <em>known</em> reader. </p>
<p>The materiality of letters sets them apart from today’s electronic equivalents. Letters are disarmingly tangible when we chance upon them in a forgotten box or tin or bundle: we might have forgotten them, but they didn’t cease to exist. They offer curious subtexts too, not least to do with the presence of the human hand on paper. </p>
<h2>A different kind of utterance</h2>
<p>I have in my possession pages of my late grandmother’s “scribble” – a self-deprecating term she used (for her handwriting or for the thoughts her letters contained? I was never sure which). </p>
<p>Her backwards-scooping scrawl carries with it her personality somehow – occasionally, I see an echo of it in my own handwriting, a certain soft flourish in an “h” or an “n”. I remember the pale blue pages on which her letters were written, and my habit of placing a heavy-ruled piece of paper beneath my own when I wrote back to her, to ensure my lines were straight. </p>
<p>Particularly precious in my family is a letter written to my father as a little boy by his own father, stationed on an air base in New Guinea in 1943. The letter, on tiny yellow paper, is written in flawless copperplate – a skill my grandfather was particularly proud of, having left school at 12 – and the front of the envelope is illustrated with an image of Ginger Meggs, hand-drawn in coloured ink. </p>
<p>Returning after the war, my grandfather was a difficult, traumatised man, but in his letter there’s a glimpse of the loving young father and husband he was before: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Barry</p>
<p>Just a few lines from your Daddy hoping it finds you well; and I also trust that your little yacht arrived alright; and I do hope it sails well for it has really big sails though I think you shall be able to manage it alright after Mum has fixed it all up for you […] Now Barry I guess you are wondering when I shall be home, well I really thought that I would be home for Xmas but now it looks like it shall be early in the new year so I am hoping I get back in time for your birthday for if I do, we shall sure have a birthday party, won’t we, with just you and Leslie and Mumie and me …“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the last years of my own father’s life, this tiny hand-inked letter had pride of place in a glass display case in his residential care unit: a beautiful relic, the ephemeral trapped on paper. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515063/original/file-20230314-16-829hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515063/original/file-20230314-16-829hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515063/original/file-20230314-16-829hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515063/original/file-20230314-16-829hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515063/original/file-20230314-16-829hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515063/original/file-20230314-16-829hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515063/original/file-20230314-16-829hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515063/original/file-20230314-16-829hle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This letter, sent to the author’s father by his father, from a New Guinea air base, is ‘particularly precious’ in her family.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It reminds me of a similarly gentle, loving letter written by John Steinbeck to his son in 1958, upon his son’s announcement that he had fallen in love:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear Thom:</p>
<p>First – if you are in love – that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.</p>
<p>Second – There are several kinds of love […] The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Did Steinbeck speak as honestly and tenderly to his son in person? Perhaps, I don’t know. But it’s possible that letters allowed a different kind of utterance for "strong, silent” men of past generations: a benevolent “father-tongue” (lower case) which enabled them to shed, if momentarily, the practised hardness of masculinity. </p>
<p>I know that my grandfather’s letter contains a grace and sweetness that was not present in person. In person, his expression of love was to teach my father how to box. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515064/original/file-20230314-2366-7wgker.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a letter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515064/original/file-20230314-2366-7wgker.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515064/original/file-20230314-2366-7wgker.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515064/original/file-20230314-2366-7wgker.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515064/original/file-20230314-2366-7wgker.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515064/original/file-20230314-2366-7wgker.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515064/original/file-20230314-2366-7wgker.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515064/original/file-20230314-2366-7wgker.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author’s grandfather’s letter contains ‘a grace and sweetness that was not present in person’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hold-the-post-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-dead-letter-38581">Hold the post: there's no such thing as a dead letter</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Famous love letters</h2>
<p>Love letters, of course, occupy a place of their own within the “genre”, if it can be called a genre. The 5,000 or so <a href="https://www.npr.org/2011/07/21/138467808/stieglitz-and-okeeffe-their-love-and-life-in-letters">letters between Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Steiglitz</a>, penned across 30 years, provide a window onto the mutual creative inspiration that existed between the two artists, but also include searing love letters that testify to an enduring sensuality. </p>
<p>“Dearest,” writes Georgia: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>— my body is simply crazy with wanting you – If you don’t come tomorrow – I don’t see how I can wait for you – I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours – the kisses – the hotness – the wetness – all melting together – the being held so tight that it hurts – the strangle and the struggle.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515416/original/file-20230315-28-i6oy82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515416/original/file-20230315-28-i6oy82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515416/original/file-20230315-28-i6oy82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515416/original/file-20230315-28-i6oy82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515416/original/file-20230315-28-i6oy82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=759&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515416/original/file-20230315-28-i6oy82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515416/original/file-20230315-28-i6oy82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515416/original/file-20230315-28-i6oy82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Georgia O'Keeffe photographed by Alfred Stieglitz in 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On a voyeuristic level, the love letters of the famous gratify our curiosity – what went on between these two giants of the screen/literary world/art scene? Were they (are they?) like us in their lusts and their pettinesses? Often, yes, they <em>are</em> like us – we’re reassured by their broken promises and bickerings and insecurities. </p>
<p>They say things they shouldn’t, embarrassing things, things they later regret. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tug-of-the-tale-steven-carroll-reimagines-the-life-and-times-of-t-s-eliot-and-his-first-wife-vivienne-177619">T.S. Eliot</a> later disavowed <a href="https://tseliot.com/the-eliot-hale-letters">his fervent love letters</a> to American speech and drama teacher Emily Hale – they “were the letters of an hallucinated man,” he said. Nevertheless, these letters have an ardour, a heart-on-the-sleeve earnestness, that reveals a different side to the cool modernist poet, a side that was warm-blooded, ruled by the heart, even, possibly, vulnerable.</p>
<p>Letters are immediate; we write them from inside the moment, and so the immediate, the moment, becomes the truth. Their vigour, and their value, lies in this unedited, uneditable quality: they document us, trap fleeting moments in glass. We might even say things that bare our souls. “I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia,” wrote Vita Sackville-West famously to Virginia Woolf in one such moment in 1926. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515112/original/file-20230314-30-sz23ty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a postmarked letter addressed to Miss Emily Hale" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515112/original/file-20230314-30-sz23ty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515112/original/file-20230314-30-sz23ty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515112/original/file-20230314-30-sz23ty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515112/original/file-20230314-30-sz23ty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515112/original/file-20230314-30-sz23ty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515112/original/file-20230314-30-sz23ty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515112/original/file-20230314-30-sz23ty.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poet T.S. Eliot later disavowed his love letters to Emily Hale as the work ‘of an hallucinated man’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ashley Gamarello, Princeton University Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of the funniest/“dirtiest” letters on the public record are James Joyce’s <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/02/02/james-joyces-love-letters-dirty-little-fuckbird/">letters to his wife Nora Barnacle</a>, in which he joyously catalogues her repertoire of farts: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole … I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The publication of the letters in 1975 upset Joyce’s grandson, but the correspondence reveals a healthy mutual sexual relationship, free of any false social pieties and, certainly, of embarrassment. </p>
<p>The love letters of famous writers have a pith and poetry the rest of us might not be equal to, but even the simplest love letters, if they’re heartfelt, speak of who we are, or once were, and how we affected other people. They are testament to the risks we take to express deep and difficult feelings; the things we might not have been able to say in the flesh.</p>
<p>My first boyfriend says he wrote me a love letter when we were 16 and I sent it back to him with the spelling corrected in red pen. I can’t remember the spirit with which I embarked on this particular revision, but it’s retrospectively both very funny and an insight into my own priggishness. Nor can I imagine making such amendments now using tracked changes – somehow I think it would be less funny and more tragic. </p>
<p>I have in my possession other love letters from the pre-internet age – not many, a few. They embarrassed me, mainly, at the time, but I’m glad I’ve kept them – they are charged with a force that cuts through time, and connects me with myself as a younger, if more callous, person.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/weaponised-irony-after-fictionalising-elizabeth-macarthurs-life-kate-grenville-edits-her-letters-180335">'Weaponised irony': after fictionalising Elizabeth Macarthur's life, Kate Grenville edits her letters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Email and autocorrect</h2>
<p>And while famous love letters of the past are collected, collated and curated for public consumption, I’m not sure a 21st-century romantic email correspondence will have the same longevity. For one thing, emails are less spontaneous: if only because they are infinitely revisable, deletable – as well as easily forwardable (accidentally or otherwise). </p>
<p>They don’t contain the mark of the person, the pecularities of handwriting or, yes, spelling mistakes – autocorrect puts out these interesting little fires. Writes O’Grady: “It’s hard to imagine that in 50 years we’ll be picking up The Collected Emails of Zadie Smith.” </p>
<p>Email won’t ever be a replacement for the unfolding, from a wadded envelope, of several pages of lovingly tended text. For me, at least. I use email for collegiate communications, friendly transactions, social to-ings and fro-ings. While it might provide the last vestige of formality in an increasingly informal communications world, email remains an inadequate substitute for letters. </p>
<p>Delayed gratification – part of the frisson of a traditional correspondence – is a bad portent when it comes to emails. It’s easy to interpret even the briefest email silence as unwillingness or neglect on the part of the recipient. O’Grady writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Email – already an old-fashioned form – isn’t really the electronic replacement of the letter but a different mode of communication entirely: fleeter, tactical, somehow both more and less disposable. It is unwise to commit too much of oneself to electronic code, which lives on in some ether or another, unflung into the fireplace.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Text messages are semiotically interesting in the way they codify language and narrative, but their idiom is brevity. You can flirt in a series of text messages, you can also argue, but you can’t reflect the way you might in a letter; it’s easy to send a platitude or establish a rapport in a text, not so easy to tease out a philosophy.</p>
<p>Letter-writing is a commitment of time and an offering of trust, both an indulgence and an act of generosity. It must trust that what is being related will be accepted. It must assume that its confidences will be honoured.</p>
<h2>‘The stuff of life’</h2>
<p>As a writer looking for a literary device with which to capture the voice of a troubled female poet in 1960s Melbourne, first-person narrative didn’t work. I tried and got nowhere. It couldn’t satisfactorily make visible the ruptures and randomness of my character’s life, its trivial details and entertaining side-notes: the nappies she had to run off and attend to; the soggy egg cartons glimpsed dishearteningly through a window; the clothesline she feared being garrotted by. </p>
<p><em>If it’s not doing something to further the narrative</em>, goes the traditional novel-writing wisdom, <em>cut it out</em>. But I wanted to put in the things that didn’t further the narrative: the ephemeral things, apparently unimportant, that are actually the stuff of life. </p>
<p>Letter-writing allows this <em>stuff</em> to be present. Perhaps it’s the only traditional writing form that does, and it gave me a credible reason for putting the trivial, the small, the fleeting into my story. And when I did, to my surprise, my character came to life: she became spontaneous and real and began to speak in a language and voice that seemed authentic.</p>
<p>In her wonderful 1988 essay about writing and motherhood, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/22/books/the-hand-that-rocks-the-cradle-writes-the-book.html">The Fisherwoman’s Daughter</a>, Ursula Le Guin used the term “mother tongue” to describe an “authentic” women’s language. The mother tongue, she says, speaks with intimacy, proximity, connectivity; it’s the voice with which we talk to a neighbour over the fence, or to our children when they come home late, or to our partners when it’s their turn to take out the bins, or our friends when we’re trying to make them laugh over a drink. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/469310">Its power</a> is not in dividing but in binding … We all know it by heart. John have you got your umbrella I think it’s going to rain. Can you come play with me? If I told you once I told you a hundred times … O what am I going to do? … Pass the soy sauce please. Oh, shit … You look like what the cat dragged in …</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515422/original/file-20230315-28-sf4se8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman holding a cup of tea." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515422/original/file-20230315-28-sf4se8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515422/original/file-20230315-28-sf4se8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515422/original/file-20230315-28-sf4se8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515422/original/file-20230315-28-sf4se8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515422/original/file-20230315-28-sf4se8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515422/original/file-20230315-28-sf4se8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515422/original/file-20230315-28-sf4se8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ursula Le Guin in 2001.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Benjamin Brink/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In its use of the mother tongue, correspondence actually corresponds with the ways we interact with people in our lives, as well as with the spontaneities of speech itself. It doesn’t pretend the writer is not a real person, speaking in an authoritative void, like an oracle, to untethered, disembodied others. It allows the full catastrophe of life to be present and visible. </p>
<p>Researching the letters of women poets in preparation for working on <a href="https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1781">my novel</a>, I realised letter-writing has always been socially acceptable for women in ways the “master” forms of literary production – the novel, the poem – haven’t been. So long as they were literate, women have always written letters – as an essential form of communication and self-expression, but also because writing letters didn’t disturb the status quo or conflict with domestic or mothering responsibilities. </p>
<p>A woman didn’t need to consciously conceive of herself as a “writer” in order to be an avid letter-writer. And a woman didn’t need a “room of her own” in order to write her letters; she could write them among the potato peels and bills and children’s laundry. Quietly, (apparently) benignly, women have for centuries been able to refine and experiment with their writing practice under the guise of merely “writing a letter”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515111/original/file-20230314-20-ui8che.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515111/original/file-20230314-20-ui8che.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515111/original/file-20230314-20-ui8che.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515111/original/file-20230314-20-ui8che.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515111/original/file-20230314-20-ui8che.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515111/original/file-20230314-20-ui8che.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515111/original/file-20230314-20-ui8che.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515111/original/file-20230314-20-ui8che.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman didn’t need to think of herself as ‘a writer’ to write letters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cottonbro Studio/Pexels</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So perhaps letter-writing has functioned as a kind of ruse or subterfuge for women: a way of writing without seeming to have “unseemly” writerly ambitions. I think of my grandmother’s characterisation of her letters as “scribble”. </p>
<p>It was not the done thing for a woman of her generation to publicise her accomplishments, but I knew <em>she knew</em> she was a good writer, with lovely handwriting, and a gentle and responsive style. Calling her writing “scribble”, I realised, was a way of repudiating the criticism of thinking she had something to say, but getting on with the job of saying it nevertheless. </p>
<p>As I wrote my character’s letters to her sister, I became more and more convinced that letter-writing has functioned as a radical, maybe even revolutionary, writing form for women. This is because, on the one hand, it was considered so socially unthreatening that it went under the radar, and, on the other, because it allowed the small daily realities of women’s lives to be made visible. </p>
<p>It could be written from within the midst of their lives – not separate, not in a garret room or writer’s hut — but right there, on the kitchen table amongst the scraps and the bills and the children’s toys. </p>
<p>Gregory Kratzmann, editor of Australian poet Gwen Harwood’s voluminous correspondence, says Harwood wrote her correspondence in precisely this way: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>She wrote letters quickly and with great facility, often when she was surrounded by domestic activity […] sometimes three or more long letters in the same day […] the activity of writing was an essential part of living […]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The prolific 19th-century novelist Margaret Oliphant used this same “kitchen-table” approach to write her novels – and there were nearly one hundred of them. Far from imperilling her progress, she felt that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>her writing profited, from the difficult, obscure, chancy connection between the art work and emotional/manual/managerial complex of skills and tasks called “housework,” and that to sever that connection would put the writing itself at risk, would make it, in her word, unnatural.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If letter-writing can tolerate interruption, distraction, diversion, it stands to reason that novel writing can too. And poetry writing. And even philosophical treatise writing. Perhaps being interrupted is not so terrible nor so damaging to artistic creation as we have always thought. Who says that the uninterrupted thought is better than the interrupted one?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gwen-harwood-was-one-of-australias-finest-poets-she-was-also-one-of-the-most-subversive-183637">Gwen Harwood was one of Australia's finest poets – she was also one of the most subversive</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘The framing of a sentence’</h2>
<p>I have never had an inviolate writing space of my own. Everything I have written has been interrupted constantly by children and domestic demands. I stop to remedy problems; attend to outbursts of screaming; acquire and prepare drawing materials; find lost books; answer spelling enquiries; listen to an imaginative narrative just written; lace on rollerblades; deal with insistent lamentations that “There’s nothing to eat”. </p>
<p>My writing space has been fundamentally accessible to my children: they remove pens and papers and post-it notes, use my desk as a place to apply nail-polish, leave tell-tale trails of crumbs and rings from glasses. Yes, it’s annoying. Does it make my writing worse? No. Sometimes it makes it better.</p>
<p>Writing my character, contemplating all this, I thought – dare I say it? – that perhaps Virginia Woolf was wrong. Perhaps “a room of one’s own” has never been necessary to the writing of prose. Perhaps the seeds of a different kind of writing practice, one that served women’s realities and responsibilities better, can be glimpsed in the practice of letter writing. </p>
<p>Correspondence has always enabled women to become caught up, immersed, in the moment of the work, yet remain equally available and connected to life around them. </p>
<p>Thus it deserves our attention, even as it fades from view as a writing practice. To return to Virginia Woolf’s silently observed letter-writing girl at the beginning of this essay: “[W]hat a gift that untaught and solitary girl had for the framing of a sentence, for the fashioning of a scene.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edwina Preston received funding from the Australia Council for her latest published novel.</span></em></p>Edwina Preston pays tribute to the humble letter: from literary love letters to philosophical lessons to cherished family heirlooms. Letters impart lessons, reveal character – and are a form of art.Edwina Preston, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1487202020-12-27T20:41:40Z2020-12-27T20:41:40ZHere’s why you’re checking work emails on holidays (and how to stop)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373506/original/file-20201208-19-1abl6yt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C5%2C997%2C660&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-using-tablet-computer-while-relaxing-270714437">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Finally, the holidays are here — the break you’ve been waiting for. You want to leave work behind, kick back and enjoy time with family and friends. </p>
<p>But you’re still checking work emails and taking work calls. Even if you are at a remote location that screams holiday, you’re still thinking about work, or even doing work, although you promised yourself this time would be different.</p>
<p>If this sounds familiar, you’re not the only one <a href="https://securitybrief.com.au/story/aussie-workers-struggling-to-switch-off-while-on-holiday">struggling to switch off</a> on holidays. </p>
<p>One reason is you, like many others, might derive a strong sense of self from your work.</p>
<h2>Work helps shape your identity</h2>
<p>Humans crave answers to the question “who am I?”. One place we find these answers is in the activities we do — including our work. Whether we work by choice, necessity, or a bit of both, many of us find work inevitably becomes a source of our identity. </p>
<p>We develop <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-7988-9_29">professional identities</a> (“I’m a lawyer”), <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/258189?origin=crossref&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">organisational identities</a> (“I’m a Google employee”), or as we discovered in our research, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018726719851835">performance-based identities</a> (“I’m a top performer”). </p>
<p>Such identification can be beneficial. It has been linked with <a href="https://iaap-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1464-0597.00020">increased motivation and work performance</a>, and even <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/10990992/47/7">better health</a>. But it can also prevent us from switching off.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-our-obsession-with-performance-is-changing-our-sense-of-self-120212">How our obsession with performance is changing our sense of self</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Your work identity can make it harder to switch off</h2>
<p>We all know people who are mentally “on holidays” even before the holidays have started. But for others, switching off from work is not so easy. Why?</p>
<p>One factor is our identity mix. We all have multiple identities, but the range and relative importance of our identities <a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/19416520.2014.912379">vary</a> from person to person.</p>
<p>If work-related identities occupy a central place in how we see ourselves, they’re likely to shape our thinking and behaviour beyond work hours — including during holidays. In other words, we stay mentally connected to work not because the boss or the job necessarily requires it, but because it’s hard to imagine other ways of “being ourselves”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1093283823951855616"}"></div></p>
<p>Equally important to why some of us struggle to switch off on holidays are <a href="https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.89.5.657">environmental cues</a>. That relaxing chair by the pool or the company of family tell us we’re off work. But email alerts or phone calls, or even the simple sight of our laptop, can activate work identities and associated mindsets and behaviours. No wonder our plans for switching off are doomed.</p>
<h2>Yes, but what can I do about it?</h2>
<p>It’s worth considering all that obvious advice you’ve heard on the benefits of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/click-here-happiness/201801/5-ways-do-digital-detox">digital detox</a>. </p>
<p>This is even more important in the new normal of working from home in 2020 and beyond. For many of us, the office and home are now one and the same, meaning we have to work even harder to protect non-work time from work-related incursions.</p>
<p>From an identity perspective, though, there’s a lot more we can do.</p>
<p>First, we can scan the environment and remove any cues that might activate our work identity (beyond switching off email alerts). This might be something as simple as hiding your laptop in a drawer.</p>
<p>At the same time, introduce cues to activate other identities. For instance, if you’re a tennis player or an aspiring artist, keep your gear visible so your brain is primed to focus on those aspects of your self. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tennis bag, racket, ball and shoes lying around at home" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373518/original/file-20201208-13-1pz688m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Keep your tennis gear visible so your brain is primed to focus on your identity as a tennis player.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sport-fitness-healthy-lifestyle-objects-concept-344017223">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, research suggests we can engage in “<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/job.2318">identity work</a>” and “<a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09534811011017180/full/html">identity play</a>”. That’s deliberately managing and revising our identities, and even experimenting with potential new ones. Imagining and trying new and more complex versions of ourselves takes time, but it can be an effective antidote to an overpowering work identity. </p>
<p>But simply trying to not think about work over the holidays is likely to do more harm than good. Much research shows trying to suppress certain thoughts <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.51.1.59?utm_source=thearchive.me&casa_token=7EMuUEUjcZIAAAAA:oonIM3-aA-zdrfjL7Le0VHaC9_Mnn08E-zBWich68hLk4LcP6eEdfea8iTegKa63K-x4Wee8smOJmgE">tends to have the opposite effect</a>, making us not only have the thought more, but also feeling worse afterwards. </p>
<p>A better approach may be to <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/blog/two-takes-depression/201102/introduction-acceptance-and-commitment-therapy">accept the thought</a> for what it is (a simple mental event), and naturally let your mind move to the next carriage in your train of thought.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/were-all-going-on-a-summer-holiday-well-some-of-us-34075">We’re all going on a summer holiday – well, some of us ...</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the long term, it’s worth reflecting on whether you might be <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02678373.2012.712291">over-identifying</a> with work. </p>
<p>One way to test this is by assessing how you feel about doing the unthinkable of completely unplugging for a while. Does that make you anxious? </p>
<p>What about the idea of retirement — that final “holiday” we’ve worked towards our entire life? This too <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-13403-009">can be challenging for identity reasons</a>: giving up work can feel like giving up a part of ourselves. We can prevent that, and ensure we enjoy retirement and all other holidays, by considering what else we could use as equally valid sources of identity.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the aim is to see ourselves as the complex creatures we indeed are, defined by more than just our work, so we can make the most of our precious time away from it.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Disclaimer: We wrote part of this article on holidays. Academics <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2017/01/30/academics-can-and-should-stop-equating-their-identity-work-essay">are perhaps the best (or worst?) example</a> of over-identifying with work. Time for us to really practise what we preach.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our work is often so closely tied to our sense of who we are, many of us struggle to switch off on holidays. But it’s never too late to hide the laptop.Dan Caprar, Associate Professor, University of SydneyBen Walker, Lecturer (Management), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1181852019-06-04T10:33:35Z2019-06-04T10:33:35ZThe South African government’s thinking on surveillance law is regressive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277657/original/file-20190603-69055-1okk9e3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The constitutionality of South Africa's surveillance law is being challenged in court.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A case before the High Court in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital city, is set to have important implications for citizens’ privacy – and the ability of journalists to do their work without hindrance.</p>
<p>At the heart of the problem is the country’s main communication surveillance law, the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/2002-070.pdf">(Rica)</a>.</p>
<p>Rica was promulgated shortly after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-pain-of-9-11-still-stays-with-a-generation-64725">September 11 terror attacks</a> in the US in 2001. It prohibits people’s communications, such as their phone calls, from being intercepted without their consent, except under certain conditions. But it can be abused by rogue elements in intelligence. They argue that it does not sufficiently protect the personal communications of private citizens, politicians and journalists.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://amabhungane.org/">amaBhungane</a> Centre for Investigative Journalism and its founding partner, journalist <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-07-04-journalist-surveillance-spooks-are-back-in-action">Sam Sole</a>, are challenging the constitutionality of sections of Rica. They’re doing so on the basis that it does not sufficiently protect freedom of expression and privacy rights. This is because it allows the state to spy on people’s communications with inadequate safeguards to prevent abuse.</p>
<h2>Rica in perspective: good and bad</h2>
<p>One strength of the Rica law is that it requires a judge to authorise the communication interception directions (or warrants). These directions are also limited to serious crimes. Neighbouring Zimbabwe, by contrast, has executive authorisation – so a government official can make this decision.</p>
<p>However, this strength in Rica is undermined by the fact that decisions to grant interception directions are taken by only one retired judge who is working alone without having the benefit of an adversarial process. The process is inherently one-sided: the judge has to rely on information provided by the spy agencies, and has been <a href="https://www.defenceweb.co.za/security/national-security/former-police-crime-intelligence-officer-guilty-of-phone-spying/">lied to</a> in the past. This problem could be solved by having a panel of judges, and a <a href="https://worldpolicy.org/2013/08/09/what-the-nsa-can-learn-from-sweden/">public advocate</a> interrogating the applications put before the judge.</p>
<p>On a positive note, interception directions are limited to a duration of up to three months at a time and must be in writing. However, the standard for authorisations is weak. These agencies merely need to satisfy the judge that there are reasonable grounds to believe a crime has been, is being or will probably be committed. This vague formulation can lead to them engaging in speculative investigations – including to uncover journalist’s confidential sources. </p>
<p>The amaBhungane case was triggered by a disclosure that Sole’s communications with a senior prosecutor were <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-02-lessons-in-accountability-on-spy-tapes">intercepted</a>.</p>
<h2>Government’s position</h2>
<p>The respondents in the case include the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development (the executive authority responsible for Rica), the Ministry of State Security (responsible for managing the interception centres) and the South African Police Service, which is Rica’s heaviest user.</p>
<p>The government is fighting back with deeply disappointing arguments that should be reconsidered. Their actions fly in the face of recent attempts to curb abuses of <a href="https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/state-security-agency-called-recommit-serving-sa">state spying</a> and <a href="https://www.news24.com/Analysis/grabbing-at-thin-air-an-analysis-of-crime-intelligence-20190325">policing</a>. The state’s action is redolent of the <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/nzimande-sa-is-becoming-a-securocrat-state-20171026">securocratic</a> era of former President Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>The Justice Ministry <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AADvfgsuv9Nda5Qoe9oJX5i6a?dl=0&preview=180309_deputy+minister+of+justice+supplementary+affidavit+.pdf">claims</a> that no rights have been breached by Rica. Yet it <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AADvfgsuv9Nda5Qoe9oJX5i6a?dl=0&preview=180309_deputy+minister+of+justice+supplementary+affidavit+.pdf">concedes</a> that Rica needs to be reformed. In fact, it has even launched a policy <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AADvfgsuv9Nda5Qoe9oJX5i6a?dl=0&preview=180309_deputy+minister+of+justice+supplementary+affidavit+.pdf">review</a> of Rica. So, Rica is fine – but it also isn’t.</p>
<p>Given that it is meant to provide policy leadership on justice matters, the Ministry’s responses are a particularly <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AADvfgsuv9Nda5Qoe9oJX5i6a?dl=0&preview=171205_department+of+justice+and+constitutional+development+answering+affidavit.pdf">depressing</a> read. They are regressive, <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AADvfgsuv9Nda5Qoe9oJX5i6a?dl=0&preview=180309_deputy+minister+of+justice+supplementary+affidavit+.pdf">contradictory</a>, and at times incoherent.</p>
<p>The Ministry has criticised amaBhungane for preempting a policy review on Rica, and for handing parts of this review over to the courts for adjudication. It has also argued that the courts should defer to the executive on these matters. </p>
<p>The State Security Ministry echoes this view, <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AADvfgsuv9Nda5Qoe9oJX5i6a?dl=0&preview=190320_spies+heads+of+argument.pdf">arguing</a> that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>…it is not the role of Court to decide matters that involve the balancing of complex factors and sensitive subject matter relating to national security and intelligence services. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, had the government not sat on its hands and delayed relevant policy reforms (in the case of State Security, for a <a href="http://www.ssa.gov.za/Portals/0/SSA%20docs/Speeches/2010/Cwele%20Speech%20BudgetVoteAddress%2005May20101.pdf">decade</a>, the amaBhungane application may not be necessary because Rica’s constitutional deficiencies could well have been cured.</p>
<h2>Judicial oversight</h2>
<p>Independent judicial oversight is one of the most <a href="https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/1591.pdf">crucial elements</a> of effective intelligence oversight. Yet, spy agencies can resist judicial scrutiny by waving the national security wand. They have succeeded most prominently in the US, where the Supreme Court has a <a href="https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1969&context=ublr">long track record</a> of judicial deference on national security matters. They must not be allowed to succeed in South Africa. </p>
<p>The Justice Ministry has <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AADvfgsuv9Nda5Qoe9oJX5i6a?dl=0&preview=180309_deputy+minister+of+justice+supplementary+affidavit+.pdf">argued</a> that technological advances have necessitated the review of Rica. But it is making too much of technological advances, and not enough of the rights issues. It is not possible or even desirable to try and legislate for all advances. Rather the law should deal with principles.</p>
<p>In that regard, Rica should state that the more invasive of privacy the interception capability is, the higher the standard for the issuing of warrants and the more robust the oversight.</p>
<p>For instance, intercept information <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/type-resource/necessary-hacking-safeguards">obtained</a> through hacking – which is extremely invasive as it alters the device that is hacked – should not, as a general rule, be admissible as evidence in court. If it is, expert evidence must be admitted on whether the information has been compromised by the manner of interception.</p>
<h2>Troubling inferences</h2>
<p>Possibly the most important reform to Rica that amaBhungane is seeking is user notification: if a person’s communication has been intercepted, they should be informed once investigations reach a non-sensitive stage. User notification could be a powerful deterrent against abuse; affected parties could challenge the directions after the fact if they were issued with no clear basis.</p>
<p>But if the police are to be believed, and in a perhaps unintended critique of their own investigative processes, <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6y420sbgll850r/AADvfgsuv9Nda5Qoe9oJX5i6a?dl=0&preview=171002_minister+of+police+answering+affidavit+.pdf">their</a> investigations are unlikely to reach a non-sensitive stage, ever. </p>
<p>If the kind of government thinking evident in the amaBhungane case is allowed to persist under President Cyril Ramaphosa, then efforts to reform surveillance, policing and intelligence will be in trouble.</p>
<p><em>Jane Duncan is the author of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.18772/12018062156">“Stopping the Spies: Constructing and Resisting the Surveillance State in South Africa”</a> (Wits University Press, 2018)</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Duncan receives funding from the Open Society Foundation. She is a member of the Secrecy and Securitisation Focus Group of the Right2Know Campaign . </span></em></p>South Africa’s law that regulates the Interception of communications is being challenged on the basis it can be abused by rogue elements in intelligence.Jane Duncan, Professor and head of the Department of Journalism, Film and Television, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1136702019-03-28T09:51:07Z2019-03-28T09:51:07ZTen rules of email that will reduce your stress levels<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266089/original/file-20190327-139361-1azr1o8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/tired-businessman-sleeping-after-hard-working-524947354">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Email and smart phones can be stressful. Academics are calling this constant work connection <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/isj.12169">“technostress”</a>. Consequently, many European countries are now offering employees the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3116158">“right to disconnect”</a>.</p>
<p>The way email is used is complex, it cannot simply be labelled as “good” or “bad” and research shows that <a href="http://www.richardbenjamintrust.co.uk/uploads/images/Making%20a%20difference%20with%20psychology%20PDF.pdf">personality</a>, the type of work people do and their goals can influence the way they react to email.</p>
<p>Good practice with email use is not just about limiting the amount of emails sent, but improving the quality of communication.</p>
<p>Here are ten tips to reduce the stress of email at work:</p>
<h2>1. Get the subject line right</h2>
<p>Use clear and actionable subject lines.</p>
<p>The subject line should communicate exactly what the email is about in six to ten words, to allow the recipient to prioritise the email without even opening it. On mobile devices, many people only see the first 30 characters of a subject line. So keep it short. But make it descriptive enough to give an idea of what the email is about from just the subject line.</p>
<h2>2. Ask yourself: is email the right medium?</h2>
<p>Are you in the same office? Could you go and speak to the person? Could you call? Often these other forms of communication can avoid the inefficient back and forth of emailing.</p>
<p>Instant messaging and video calling platforms like <a href="https://slack.com/">Slack</a> and <a href="https://www.skype.com/en/business/">Skype</a> could be more appropriate for quick internal back and forth messaging. Also, remember that most of the advice below applies to all types of electronic communication.</p>
<h2>3. Don’t email out of office hours</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1359432X.2012.711013">Research shows</a> that out-of-hours emails make it harder for people to recover from work stress. </p>
<p>Try and influence your company culture by avoiding sending or replying to emails outside your normal working hours.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265911/original/file-20190326-36283-j1zr24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265911/original/file-20190326-36283-j1zr24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265911/original/file-20190326-36283-j1zr24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265911/original/file-20190326-36283-j1zr24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265911/original/file-20190326-36283-j1zr24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265911/original/file-20190326-36283-j1zr24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265911/original/file-20190326-36283-j1zr24.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stop doing this.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/woman-rubbing-her-eyes-feel-painful-544852936">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Management should lead by example and avoid contacting their staff outside of their normal working hours. <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/197cd828-e4c8-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac0da">Some workplaces</a> even switch off email access to employees out of hours. Consider implementing this while keeping a backup phone system for emergency contact only.</p>
<p><a href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/AMBPP.2018.121">New research</a> has also shown that just the expectation of 24-hour contact can negatively affect employee health. </p>
<h2>4. Use the delay delivery option</h2>
<p>Some <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726715601890">people</a> like integrating their work and family lives and often continue working from home during their off-job time. If you are one of these people, or if you work across time zones, consider using the delay delivery option so your emails do not send until the next working day and do not interfere with other people’s off-job time.</p>
<h2>5. Keep it positive</h2>
<p>Think about the quality of email communication. Not just the quantity. Changes to email use should also focus on the quality of what is being sent and take into consideration the emotional reaction of the recipient. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20159399?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Research suggests</a> that conflicts are far easier to escalate and messages to be misinterpreted when communicated via email. Therefore, if it is bad news, think back to rule #2: is email the right medium?</p>
<h2>6. Try ‘no email Friday’</h2>
<p>In order to shift company culture and get people thinking about other methods of communication than email, try a <a href="https://www.mbs.ac.uk/media/ambs/content-assets/documents/health-and-wellbeing-forum/happier-connected-working.pdf">“no email Friday”</a> on the first Friday of every month, or maybe even every week. This is an initiative suggested by experts from the <a href="https://www.mbs.ac.uk/health-wellbeing-forum/">National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work</a>, and is being used by businesses <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2939232&page=1">around the globe</a>. Employees are encouraged to arrange face-to-face meetings or pick up the phone – or just get on top of the many emails they already have in their inbox on that day.</p>
<h2>7. Make your preferences known</h2>
<p><a href="https://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol20/iss2/2/">Research has shown</a> that not only too much but also too little email can cause stress due to a mismatch between the communication preferences of different people. Some people may like being emailed and cope much better with high email traffic than other means of communication. For these people, reducing the amount of emails they receive may cause more stress than it alleviates. </p>
<p>So consider people’s individual differences and make yours known. Add your preferred contact preferences to your email signature whether it is email, text or instant messages or a phone call.</p>
<h2>8. Consider a holiday ‘bounce back’</h2>
<p>Having a backlog of emails that builds up over the week appears to be one of the <a href="http://people.bu.edu/grodal/Email.pdf">most commonly mentioned sources of technostress</a> for workers. Think about setting up a system where emails are bounced back to the sender when someone is on holiday, with an alternative contact email for urgent requests. This would let you come back to a manageable inbox. </p>
<h2>9. Have a separate work phone</h2>
<p>Make this the only mobile device you can access work emails on, which gives you the freedom to switch it off after work hours. Also consider turning off email <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201419">“push”</a> (this is where your email server sends each new email to your phone when it arrives at the server) and instead choose a regular schedule (such as once per hour) for emails to be delivered to your phone (this also increases battery life). </p>
<h2>10. Avoid late night screen time</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597814000089">Research suggests</a> that late night smart phone use reduces our ability to get to sleep and also leads to constant thoughts and stress about work. This in turn reduces your sleep quality. Make the bed a phone-free zone to improve your <a href="https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/features/putting-insomnia-to-bed/20205129.article">sleep hygiene</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lina Siegl receives funding from The University of Manchester for her PhD Research.
Lina Siegl works as the project coordinator for the national Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work which is a not-for-profit group.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cary Cooper and Ricardo Twumasi do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Top tips to improve your email use based on academic research into email best practice, productivity and stress.Ricardo Twumasi, Lecturer in Organisational Psychology, University of ManchesterCary Cooper, 50th Anniversary Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health, University of ManchesterLina Siegl, PhD Researcher, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1070202018-11-15T10:37:40Z2018-11-15T10:37:40ZPutting the X in text: warm wishes or a kiss-off?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245728/original/file-20181115-194506-1bqqjfv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">lanych via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Do you sign off texts and emails with an x? Have you ever thought what that x – shorthand for a kiss – means to you or the person who has sent it to you? It’s said that the liberal use of x in electronic correspondence, whether personal or professional, is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-xo-factor/309174/">feminising the workplace</a> – and Labour MP Jess Phillips was told off for being unprofessional by a judge a couple of years ago for signing off <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2016/apr/05/kisses-professional-work-emails-mp-jess-phillips-email-etiquette">an email to a constituent</a> with an x. So how did we arrive at a situation where everybody gets one at the end of nearly every sentence we type?</p>
<p>Part of our answer is really simple – the x in correspondence conveys a special kind of empathy for the recipient. In a world where uppercase letters read like SHOUTING and where emojis are ambiguous, every element of a text message is easily misunderstood. The x serves as a catch-all device, telling your reader that all is well in your relationship.</p>
<p>The ubiquitous x can be applied to friendship, romantic, or even professional relationships when messaging. It is so versatile, revealing interest, affection and a general kind of togetherness which, if face to face, would be equivalent to some kind of non-verbal body language – a head tilt, or a sympathetic nod to show agreement and understanding. The x shows that you are in this together and that you seek to continue the conversation in a spirit of mutual and even jovial appreciation.</p>
<p>However, this still doesn’t fully explain why it is an x that has come to wield such power, or why it feels so essential to include one. After all, it could be – and sometimes is – a different symbol: an emoji perhaps, or a simple smiley face like this: :). Nor does it tell us about the journey taken by the x in becoming this multifaceted symbol.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245729/original/file-20181115-194488-1o1cjbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245729/original/file-20181115-194488-1o1cjbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245729/original/file-20181115-194488-1o1cjbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245729/original/file-20181115-194488-1o1cjbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245729/original/file-20181115-194488-1o1cjbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245729/original/file-20181115-194488-1o1cjbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245729/original/file-20181115-194488-1o1cjbm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are you free with your emojis?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mego studio via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Making your mark</h2>
<p>History tells us that the x has a long pedigree. In the middle ages, handwritten letters would end with an + to signify the Christian symbol of Christ. With most people being illiterate, a cross <a href="https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/%22X%22+as+a+Signature">was deemed</a> to be sufficiently accessible to verify identity. What’s more, there is <a href="https://mashable.com/2015/02/11/kiss-symbol-x/?europe=true#srmg.9zSasqJ">evidence</a> of such rituals of signing documentation to be accompanied by a physical kiss being given to the paper, as one might kiss a cross if of certain religious persuasions.</p>
<p>But, this still leaves a big gap between then and now. What happened at the beginnings of the digital revolution that explains this progressive encroachment into all of our correspondence, turning every message into its own letter? Equally, why did the x remain, while other elements of letter writing disappeared, such as writing: “Dear [name]”, or “from [name]” at the start and end of correspondence. We nearly never do this now when sending texts, because messaging has become an endless letter, a conversation that is always left open, to be picked up again at a later stage. It isn’t difficult to imagine that the cross at the end of letters evolved into the x just as words like “goodbye”, <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/goodbye">evolved</a> out of “God be with you”.</p>
<h2>Kissing culture</h2>
<p>Yet, for today’s generation, the connection behind the x is likely to be completely lost – it is simply some kind of kiss and, just like a cross, using it could land you in big trouble. After all, the kiss is remarkably culturally specific and an x can mean something very different – or nothing at all in a different language. For instance, in Spanish, x is short for “por”, meaning “for”. Equally, a kiss in one culture means something different in another and, in some cultures, <a href="https://scienceline.org/2006/10/ask-fiore-kiss/">there is no kissing at all</a>. There is also a gendered politics to a kiss, which can make it a highly risky undertaking to send, especially in professional settings.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245732/original/file-20181115-194506-19roxcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245732/original/file-20181115-194506-19roxcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245732/original/file-20181115-194506-19roxcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245732/original/file-20181115-194506-19roxcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245732/original/file-20181115-194506-19roxcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245732/original/file-20181115-194506-19roxcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245732/original/file-20181115-194506-19roxcm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forgotten your phone?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monkey Business Images via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time, the x can be a way of allowing somebody to express themselves physically without the pressure of actually having to touch somebody. Indeed, this is one of the web’s most amazing features; it can liberate us from the constraints of social conventions and provide a space for relating to others differently – a perspective that <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137297792_2">researchers have outlined</a> since its inception.</p>
<p>There may be many people who sign off with an x who would not think of kissing the person when face to face, but feel comfortable expressing such affection through a symbol. At a time when the world wide web’s inventor, Sir Tim Berners Lee, has called for <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-www/father-of-web-says-tech-giants-may-have-to-be-split-up-idUSKCN1N63MV?">more love online</a>, this is surely a good thing.</p>
<p>So, while seemingly one of the most uncomplicated things we do when messaging, the x in texts has far wider implications than perhaps we first thought. A good rule may be to only send an x to people who would be comfortable with you kissing them face to face. Would you actually kiss that person, if they were in front of you? If not, then perhaps drop the x.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andy Miah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>People should be a bit more careful when signing off their emails and text messages. Not everyone wants a kiss.Andy Miah, Chair in Science Communication & Future Media, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778622017-06-06T19:23:01Z2017-06-06T19:23:01ZTo smiley face or not: the complexity of email etiquette<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172376/original/file-20170606-16877-1llalj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Experts over time continue to disagree on what is the best email etiquette.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172379/original/file-20170606-16853-1lgbpc6.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172379/original/file-20170606-16853-1lgbpc6.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172379/original/file-20170606-16853-1lgbpc6.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172379/original/file-20170606-16853-1lgbpc6.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172379/original/file-20170606-16853-1lgbpc6.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172379/original/file-20170606-16853-1lgbpc6.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172379/original/file-20170606-16853-1lgbpc6.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Emails are ubiquitous in a modern, globalised workforce. However, a well-crafted email can make the sender appear <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2001-11562-013">approachable and competent</a>, while a poorly constructed one is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327744joce1502_4">less persuasive</a>, and leaves recipients <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03634523.2012.667135">less willing to comply</a> with the request. </p>
<p>Alongside making requests and providing information, emails help us <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490616301958">build rapport</a> in the workplace and <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490608000501">long-term business relationships</a>. So it’s unsurprising that there’s a sizable market for help with email etiquette.</p>
<p>An internet search for “email etiquette” generates 433,000 results, while a search for books on email etiquette fetches 76 titles (on Amazon.com). However, the advice we get is often hazy, lacking justification, and may even be contradictory at times. </p>
<p>A 2003 study <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1202381/?reload=true">suggested</a> that these different opinions on what to write in an email will converge over time, and that rules will emerge. But 14 years later, we still haven’t gone very far in producing or sticking to a standard. </p>
<h2>Why there is no standard when it comes to email etiquette</h2>
<p>The problem is emails are all written for very different purposes, including personal messages and invitations, advertising and customer inquiries, team announcements and company newsletters among other things. The setting also changes; what is acceptable in an academic’s emails is <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490612000166">different</a> from business emails.</p>
<p>The norms in emails also vary <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490612000166">between internal and external communication</a>, according to <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490616301958">profession</a> and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1470595812452638">across cultures</a>. </p>
<p>It doesn’t help either that the conventions of email communication are <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/always-on-9780195313055?cc=au&lang=en&">constantly evolving</a>. If there isn’t a one-size-fits-all template that we can apply, what can we rely on to guide email writing? </p>
<h2>It’s all about the context</h2>
<p>If you look at the context for each email it can give you a guide as to what to write. Take for example greeting and closing an email.</p>
<p>A common point of <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1202381/?reload=true">disagreement</a> between commentators is the need for proper greetings and closings.
On the one hand, our <a href="http://sttstraining.com/mble7e/">guidebooks</a> tell us we should always include an appropriate greeting, while on the other, the emails we often see in the workplace seem to contain <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490612000166">no greetings at all</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00333.x/abstract">Openings and closings in emails are used to establish</a> the relationship between the sender and the recipient, so this should be the first consideration. Employees who are addressing a distant colleague or someone with higher authority, for example, <a href="http://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/handle/123456789/193693">are more likely to include a greeting</a>. </p>
<p>However, the relationship between sender and recipient develops as emails form a chain of exchanges. Chances are that most of the internal emails we send are linked to an earlier phone call or other emails. In that case the relationship and context would have been <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490612000166">well-established</a> already.</p>
<p>These forms of quick exchanges without a greeting or closing <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/writing-online-a-guide-to-effective-digital-communication-at-work/oclc/930531049">resemble an ongoing spoken conversation</a> stretched over a few emails. So any further greetings would seem <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/105004772/language-and-the-internet">repetitive and excessive</a>. </p>
<p>However, a sender may still choose to include greetings and closing expressions such as “Dear Mr X” and “Kind regards” to <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490616301958">emphasise or downplay the difference in power</a> or to put some distance between themselves and their recipient. Conversely, inclusive salutations such as “Hi Team” or “Hi everyone” and empathetic closes such as “Well done” could help to invoke solidarity among your coworkers and <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137558121">trigger them to act</a>. </p>
<p>It’s also useful to consider the role that the email plays in the overall activity. Internal emails are often short and succinct, because they are sent to <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490612000166">provide instructions or information</a> as part of the daily workflow. </p>
<p>Once the purpose of such messages is identified, details can be summarised in point form and abbreviations, so your team members can easily retrieve the information they need without wading through lines of pleasantries. Keeping the message brief also makes it easier to read on smartphones.</p>
<p>However, when it comes to conducting delicate negotiations with customers, when it is necessary to <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490608000501">build trust, assert power and establish relationships</a>, emails would have to be longer. Senders would have to couch sensitive messages in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490612000166">formal language and stock phrases</a>, to strengthen their authority by <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00314.x/abstract">making the message sound impersonal</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172381/original/file-20170606-16877-5xeoo2.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172381/original/file-20170606-16877-5xeoo2.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172381/original/file-20170606-16877-5xeoo2.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172381/original/file-20170606-16877-5xeoo2.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172381/original/file-20170606-16877-5xeoo2.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172381/original/file-20170606-16877-5xeoo2.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172381/original/file-20170606-16877-5xeoo2.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>To smiley face or not?</h2>
<p>Guidebooks also disagree on the use of newer features that deviate from more traditional forms of writing, such as <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1202381/?reload=true">emoticons</a>. However, emoticons provide a useful way to manage solidarity by <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137405562#">softening requests and minimising impositions</a> at the workplace.</p>
<p>So let’s face it – regardless of what the guidebooks say, people are going to continue using them. This is because emails lack the non-verbal cues that we rely on in face-to-face interactions, such as facial expressions, and this creates the potential for ambiguity and uncertainty in how messages are interpreted. Emoticons are used to <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021943606297902">disambiguate the tone</a> of a message where there are more than one way to interpret it. </p>
<p>However, senders may also appropriate and exploit the digital features in emails to pursue complex agendas. While the “CC” function ostensibly provides accountability and allows monitoring of work processes, senders may choose to copy in a colleague in a <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/writing-online-a-guide-to-effective-digital-communication-at-work/oclc/930531049">power-play</a> <a href="http://research.cbs.dk/files/44523775/anne_marie_b_low_distant_relations_postprint.pdf">to strengthen their authority and put pressure on the recipient</a>. </p>
<p>It’s worth mentioning that in these examples, the email senders are not simply observing a set of rules for each context; they are <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137558121">actively shaping their context</a> with each choice they make. </p>
<p>The things we choose to do or not do with emails are social actions. As a part of human interaction, emails are as nuanced and complex as the social world we write them in. It is unlikely that we can rely on a checklist or quick-fix rules to get them right, as appealing as that may sound.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ken Tann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As a part of human interaction, emails are as nuanced and complex as the social world we find them, and it is unlikely that we can rely on a checklist of quick-fix rules.Ken Tann, Lecturer in Communication Management, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/683022016-11-10T10:39:54Z2016-11-10T10:39:54ZEmail isn’t dead – and it’s helping to keep newspapers alive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144849/original/image-20161107-4704-1ge3v45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kaspars Grinvalds</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just over a year ago, Stewart Butterfield – who invented the rapidly growing message app Slack – joined the list of prophets declaring that <a href="http://blog.sage.co.uk/index.php/2015/11/5-surprising-things-we-learnt-at-web-summit-on-day-1/#.WCQ8ZXCLTIV">email was dead</a> and that productivity apps like his were a more effective means of business communication. </p>
<p>He is not the first – and will no doubt not be the last – to predict the demise of email, but nearly four decades since the first emails were sent, they have only grown as a mainstay of human interaction. With the <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/wall-street-is-giving-up-on-the-blackberry-2015-6?r=US&IR=T">shift from Blackberry devices</a> for executives to <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/203734/global-smartphone-penetration-per-capita-since-2005/">near-universal individual ownership of smartphones</a> in many countries, they have become an ever more widely used medium for pleasure as well as business by an ever greater variety of people.</p>
<p>Despite their limitations, emails can play a valuable role in journalism and the public communication of ideas, including at <a href="http://theconversationuk.cmail20.com/t/ViewEmail/r/9086F0B8027E90E62540EF23F30FEDED/1F178C56C4CBB2581D419C9787CC9684">The Conversation</a>, conveniently “pushing” content to busy readers increasingly faced with two burdens: the information overload and the explosion of digital channels – from web homepages and apps to social media platforms – vying for their attention.</p>
<p>Now they are being re-embraced by newsrooms struggling for readers’ attention and in search of new business models. I <a href="http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Editorial%20Email%20Newsletters%20The%20Medium%20is%20Not%20The%20Only%20Message_0.pdf">decided to investigate the trend</a>, spurred by fresh investment from “legacy” print media such as the New York Times, digital “natives” such as BuzzFeed and Apple, and older journals upgrading with innovative funding such as the Washington Post under its new owner, the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos.</p>
<p>In marketing, emails never fell out of fashion. They have long been seen as one of the most powerful ways to target consumers and entice them to buy goods and services. Evolutions such as good spam filters to remove junk have made the survivors ever more attractive and effective. That explains why the volumes sent continue to grow: an estimated <a href="http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-in-world-without-email">215 billion will be sent during 2016</a> alone.</p>
<p>But, for a long time in journalism, emails were neglected. The digital revolution triggered an explosion in the amount, variety and accessibility of content (albeit much of it recycled). It also fostered an ever greater number of innovative ways to showcase and display material, from interactive graphics to multiple social media channels.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145548/original/image-20161111-15707-1vnp3ka.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145548/original/image-20161111-15707-1vnp3ka.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145548/original/image-20161111-15707-1vnp3ka.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145548/original/image-20161111-15707-1vnp3ka.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145548/original/image-20161111-15707-1vnp3ka.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145548/original/image-20161111-15707-1vnp3ka.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145548/original/image-20161111-15707-1vnp3ka.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145548/original/image-20161111-15707-1vnp3ka.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How news organisations use email newsletters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters Institute</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While journalists (and the developers producing the associated tools and platforms) may love this trend, many readers with limited time are overwhelmed, intimidated, distracted and some even turned off entirely – or diverted towards mediocre or manipulated news and analysis – issues which have been at the core of the US presidential election.</p>
<h2>Fighting for eyeballs</h2>
<p>The web homepages of media groups <a href="http://www.poynter.org/2014/3-takeaways-from-the-death-of-the-homepage-and-the-new-york-times-innovation-report/252632/">are waning</a>, with their influence as an arbiter of judgement on the important stories of the day superseded by ever more popular intermediary services led by Facebook. Apps also struggle for attention and digital platforms come and go – as the current <a href="http://time.com/4216413/twitter-stock-user-growth-users-twtr/">pressures on Twitter</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/vines-15-minutes-of-fame-may-be-over-but-its-successors-will-not-slacken-the-pace-67888">closure of Vine</a> show.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145390/original/image-20161110-25093-hoy1bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145390/original/image-20161110-25093-hoy1bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145390/original/image-20161110-25093-hoy1bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145390/original/image-20161110-25093-hoy1bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145390/original/image-20161110-25093-hoy1bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145390/original/image-20161110-25093-hoy1bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/145390/original/image-20161110-25093-hoy1bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Email newsletters are delivering readers to news organisations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maksim Kabakou</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The recent furore around Facebook’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/facebooks-algorithms-give-it-more-editorial-responsibility-not-less-65182">biases in the selection of content</a> made by young journalists working to company guidelines has revealed two things: the limitations of algorithms alone to judge news and the risks of a “filter bubble” that restricts information flowing to readers, who are sometimes unaware of the built-in biases.</p>
<h2>Surprise and delight</h2>
<p>Email has many limitations, but at its best it overcomes some of these drawbacks by delivering focused content encapsulated in at least four concepts. The first is <em>discovery</em>, helping readers to find selections of articles without having to search laboriously among and within multiple news sources.</p>
<p>The second is <em>curation</em>, a much overused word when appropriated by almost anyone sharing their favourite articles or music. But, like the curator of an art exhibition, the best editors handpick a small selection of high-quality journalism from different places and write a narrative (often personalised) around it to produce structure and meaning.</p>
<p>The third is <em>serendipity</em>. A reader can always consciously select – or have an algorithm pick for them automatically – articles that they know they want to read, based on previous reading habits or pre-selected subjects. A skilled editor or journalist can push beyond that comfort zone by providing a broader presentation of other news that they did not even know would be interesting or important. That is the value of the old print front page or web homepage, now on the decline.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144847/original/image-20161107-4718-nfd9tt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144847/original/image-20161107-4718-nfd9tt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144847/original/image-20161107-4718-nfd9tt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144847/original/image-20161107-4718-nfd9tt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144847/original/image-20161107-4718-nfd9tt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144847/original/image-20161107-4718-nfd9tt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144847/original/image-20161107-4718-nfd9tt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144847/original/image-20161107-4718-nfd9tt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Starting points: how people get their news.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2016</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finally, there is <em>finishability</em>. Emails are concise, overcoming the readers’ sense of being overwhelmed by limiting the length and the number of items made available. Contrast that with the “infinite scroll” of endless content on many websites and social media platforms which can never be fully read and can leave readers frustrated.</p>
<p>Different newsrooms have taken multiple approaches to email newsletters, with some simply providing automated headlines and links, while others also offer considerable original commentary. Business models also vary: emails may be only for existing subscribers, supported by advertising or used to persuade people to pay.</p>
<p>But newsrooms of all sorts are increasingly launching them: some with headlines only, others with full content – and more with every variant in between: with and without images and hyperlinks. The danger today is that a glut of too many such new emails will in turn turn readers away.</p>
<p>None of the four positive characteristics are or need to be unique to emails. The principles of discovery, curation, serendipity and finishability should be important to media groups regardless of the format, platform or channel employed. Email itself may well fade away as technology advances and better mechanisms evolve. But the curated content that is their mainstay deserves to live on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68302/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Jack is a Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University which helped.support the research. He is also head of curated content at the Financial Times.</span></em></p>Daily newsletters are winning media organisations new readers.Andrew Jack, Visiting Fellow, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/682742016-11-08T11:09:56Z2016-11-08T11:09:56Z‘Spearphishing’ roiled the presidential campaign – here’s how to protect yourself<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144916/original/image-20161107-4715-31e9zq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not this kind of spearfishing – the kind that involves a computer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-100264418/">Underwater image via shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Never in American political history have hacked and stolen emails played such a central role in a presidential campaign. But hackers are likely to target you as well – though perhaps with smaller repercussions for the world as a whole.</p>
<p>Every one of October’s surprises, from the leaks of Clinton campaign chairman <a href="http://www.politico.com/live-blog-updates/2016/10/john-podesta-hillary-clinton-emails-wikileaks-000011">John Podesta’s purported emails</a> to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/06/politics/wikileaks-dnc-emails-surprise/">those of the Democratic National Committee</a>, was achieved using a surprisingly simple email deception technique called “spearphishing.” The same technique was used to attack <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system">Hillary Clinton’s private email server</a>: <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/hillary-r.-clinton-part-01-of-04/view">Two spearphishing messages</a> were found on it.</p>
<p>Many people know that the term “spearphishing” typically describes emails trying to get someone to click on a link to, say, their online bank account – but actually sending them to a lookalike site where their login information can be stolen. Some others hide malicious software (or “malware”) within links or in attachments that when clicked give the attacker control of the system or even an entire corporate network.</p>
<p>But despite years of <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/national-cyber-security-awareness-month">national efforts</a> to <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/stopthinkconnect">promote cybersecurity</a>, spearphishing remains fruitful: People are still <a href="https://theconversation.com/cybersecuritys-weakest-link-humans-57455">the weakest links in cybersecurity</a> defenses. There are, however, simple ways we can all step up to protect our own information – whether we’re central to presidential politics or regular people.</p>
<h2>A massively complex problem</h2>
<p>In general, people are fairly aware of the potential for cyberattacks. Some are even good at spotting them. In fact, both Podesta and Clinton were suspicious of the phishing emails they received. Before clicking, Podesta even <a href="http://www.apnewsarchive.com/2016/Hackers-apparently-fooled-a-Clinton-campaign-official-into-making-his-private-email-account-ripe-for-theft/id-35a2eda2ce2e4c738ca99e4891b079b8">asked his tech-support staff if a link was legitimate</a>. Those experts should have known how to spot a phishing attack, but failed: They told him to click on the malicious link.</p>
<p>The problem is not lack of awareness or even knowledge, though some of us need more of that too. It’s actually one of complexity.</p>
<p>Researchers think of computer users as working on an email while focused solely on a computer screen. But reality paints a different picture. Today, people use a variety of internet-connected gadgets and apps, with myriad prompts, feeds and notifications, all vying for their attention. </p>
<p>Estimates are that the average person <a href="http://www.techtimes.com/articles/151633/20160420/how-many-times-do-you-unlock-your-iphone-per-day-heres-the-answer-from-apple.htm">checks his smartphone 80 to 100 times each day</a>. This does not even include desktop and laptop computer screens, tablets or smartwatches. People routinely use all of those devices as well, checking, recording, reviewing and responding to requests in the office and on the go – walking, talking and even driving.</p>
<p>These interactions present a near-constant stream of information and requests. The user typically feels that he has just seconds to consider each – even though any one of them could define the fate of an entire organization or a political campaign.</p>
<h2>A very simple solution</h2>
<p>In the face of all this complexity, the best answer is a very simple one: a checklist.</p>
<p>Atul Gawande, in his book “<a href="http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/">The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right</a>,” details the importance of checklists in highly specialized fields. These are work environments where success depends on coordination between a number of trained professionals – airline pilots, surgical teams, construction engineers. Often, trained people remember to do complex tasks, like medical professionals performing difficult surgical procedures, but forget to do simple things, like <a href="http://khn.org/news/hospital-checklist-mainbar/">washing hands prior to surgery</a>.</p>
<p>Much like in cybersecurity, the problem is one of complexity and human error, with potentially severe consequences. For instance, one in every 200 medical errors involves performing the wrong procedure, or even <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/10/18/health.surgery.mixups.common/">working on the wrong patient</a>. That’s where a checklist comes in, reminding the medical staff to <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122226184#122220935">reconfirm the patient’s name and visibly mark the correct surgical site</a>.</p>
<p>In much the same way, a checklist could help us routinize the minimum actions necessary for achieving cybersafety. With this goal in mind, here is a checklist of five best practices that could help protect us online. </p>
<h2>Five steps to more secure online operations</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144942/original/image-20161107-4715-1mkyzhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144942/original/image-20161107-4715-1mkyzhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144942/original/image-20161107-4715-1mkyzhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144942/original/image-20161107-4715-1mkyzhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144942/original/image-20161107-4715-1mkyzhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144942/original/image-20161107-4715-1mkyzhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144942/original/image-20161107-4715-1mkyzhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Add two-factor authentication.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-459947872/">Two-factor authentication image from shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144943/original/image-20161107-4698-1lwbcmk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144943/original/image-20161107-4698-1lwbcmk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144943/original/image-20161107-4698-1lwbcmk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144943/original/image-20161107-4698-1lwbcmk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144943/original/image-20161107-4698-1lwbcmk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144943/original/image-20161107-4698-1lwbcmk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144943/original/image-20161107-4698-1lwbcmk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Encrypt your web traffic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AWS_Simple_Icons_Networking_Amazon_VPC_VPN_Connection.svg">AWS</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144946/original/image-20161107-4676-slaceq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144946/original/image-20161107-4676-slaceq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144946/original/image-20161107-4676-slaceq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144946/original/image-20161107-4676-slaceq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144946/original/image-20161107-4676-slaceq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144946/original/image-20161107-4676-slaceq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144946/original/image-20161107-4676-slaceq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Improve your passwords.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-292628474/">Password icon via shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144948/original/image-20161107-4688-8138ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144948/original/image-20161107-4688-8138ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144948/original/image-20161107-4688-8138ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144948/original/image-20161107-4688-8138ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144948/original/image-20161107-4688-8138ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144948/original/image-20161107-4688-8138ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144948/original/image-20161107-4688-8138ye.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Keep an eye on background activity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-104484563/">Multitask image via shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144950/original/image-20161107-4715-1printl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144950/original/image-20161107-4715-1printl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144950/original/image-20161107-4715-1printl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144950/original/image-20161107-4715-1printl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144950/original/image-20161107-4715-1printl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144950/original/image-20161107-4715-1printl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/144950/original/image-20161107-4715-1printl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Be careful following links.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-278873984/">Caution icon via shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<ol>
<li><p>Enable two-factor authentication (2FA). <a href="https://twofactorauth.org/">Most major online services</a>, from Amazon to Apple, today support 2FA. When it’s set up, the system asks for a login and password just like usual – but then sends a unique numeric code to another device, using text message, email or a specialized app. Without access to that other device, the login is refused. That makes it much harder to hack into someone’s account – but users have to enable it themselves. </p></li>
<li><p>Encrypt your internet traffic. A virtual private network (VPN) service encrypts digital communications, making it hard for hackers to intercept them. Everyone should subscribe to a VPN service, <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403388,00.asp">some of which are free</a>, and use it whenever connecting a device to a public or unknown Wi-Fi network.</p></li>
<li><p>Tighten up your password security. This is easier than it sounds, and the danger is real: Hackers often <a href="http://qz.com/791186/password-reuse-yahoo-yhoo-hack-weakens-everyones-security/">steal a login and password from one site</a> and try to use it on others. To make it simple to generate – and remember – long, strong and unique passwords, <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407168,00.asp">subscribe to a reputable password manager</a> that suggests strong passwords and stores them in an encrypted file on your own computer.</p></li>
<li><p>Monitor your devices’ behind-the-scenes activities. Many computer programs and mobile apps keep running even when they are not actively in use. Most computers, phones and tablets have a built-in activity monitor that lets users see the device’s memory use and network traffic in real time. You can see which apps are sending and receiving internet data, for example. If you see something happening that shouldn’t be, the activity monitor will also let you <a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/school/using-windows-admin-tools-like-a-pro/lesson6/all/">close the offending program completely</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>Never open hyperlinks or attachments in any emails that are suspicious. Even when they appear to come from a friend or coworker, use extreme caution – <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2927993/what-to-do-when-your-email-address-sends-spam.html">their email address might have been compromised</a> by someone trying to attack you. When in doubt, call the person or company directly to check first – and do so <a href="https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0003-phishing">using an official number</a>, never the phone number listed in the email.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Even using this checklist can’t guarantee stopping every attack or preventing every breach. But following these steps will make it significantly harder for hackers to succeed. And it will help us all develop security consciousness and ultimately better cyberhygiene. Our leaders could certainly use the help.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arun Vishwanath receives funding from National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Despite years of public information efforts, even simple cyberattacks still succeed. Here are five steps to avoiding having your emails appear on WikiLeaks.Arun Vishwanath, Associate Professor of Communication, University at BuffaloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/682772016-11-07T15:30:57Z2016-11-07T15:30:57ZQ&A with Yale scholar: How the FBI has meddled in politics before<p>FBI interference in U.S. elections is nothing new. </p>
<p>Last week, FBI Director James Comey reopened an investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. On Sunday, Comey announced the investigation was complete, and that there was no evidence that warranted charging Clinton with a crime. His actions set off a firestorm of protest, with public officials from both sides of the aisle claiming the FBI had violated a longstanding policy of avoiding actions that could be construed as interfering with an election. Many Americans believed the move to be unprecedented. </p>
<p>It’s not.</p>
<p>According to Beverly Gage, the author of “<a href="http://beverlygage.com/books/g-manj-edgar-hoover/">G-man: J. Edgar Hoover and the American Century</a>” and professor at Yale University, this is not the first time an FBI director put his finger on the presidential election scale. As a fellow <a href="http://millercenter.org/about/staff/balogh">U.S. political history scholar</a>, I wanted to dig deeper into the role of the director of the FBI and how Comey compares to his infamous predecessor, J. Edgar Hoover.</p>
<p>So, I asked Gage to talk more about the history of the FBI’s involvement in politics. </p>
<p><strong>Balogh</strong>: James Comey, current FBI director, and J. Edgar Hoover, director of the bureau from 1924 to 1972 – who was probably best-known for amassing a list of “U.S. enemies” that included suspected terrorists and spies, as well as Martin Luther King Jr. – have recently been compared. Do you think the comparisons are fair?</p>
<p><strong>Gage</strong>: Hoover occupied a more prominent role in American political life and culture than Comey does. He also exercised more power in Washington. That said, Hoover had a past of being involved in politics even as he claimed to head a nonpartisan, investigative agency. So, to that degree, I think Comey’s working within the Hoover tradition – participating in electoral politics but at the same time, claiming to be a nonpartisan agency.</p>
<p><strong>Balogh</strong>: Is there a realistic way to lead the FBI during an election year and stay out of politics?</p>
<p><strong>Gage</strong>: The FBI often conducts politically explosive investigations into corruption, or major crimes – that’s one of their jobs within the Washington bureaucracy. So, to some degree, this is unavoidable. I do think that over the last year, Comey has inserted himself more overtly into policy discussions, especially his statements about <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/26/451992173/fbi-director-doubles-down-on-linking-scrutiny-of-police-with-rise-in-violent-cri">police and about Black Lives Matter</a> - he suggested that activism around police brutality was making it difficult for police to do their jobs and placed them in greater danger. Whereas [with Clinton’s emails], if he could have avoided involvement in the investigation, I would imagine he would have preferred that.</p>
<p><strong>Balogh</strong>: What steps were taken to counteract the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover by the FBI?</p>
<p><strong>Gage</strong>: Today, the FBI director holds a very different position: There is a term limit of 10 years, although it can be waived. There’s also congressional oversight committees, freedom of information laws and more overt restrictions on the kinds of surveillance that the FBI can conduct. When Hoover was director, there was little accountability. Hoover really did exercise something close to total control.</p>
<p>In theory, the discretion and power of the FBI director is more limited now than it was during Hoover’s time. Of course, the FBI is still a bureaucracy and an intelligence agency that operates partly in secret. So, it’s always a little hard to tell what’s happening behind the scenes.</p>
<p><strong>Balogh</strong>: Do you think the steps taken, the limits on discretion and the amount of power, are helpful?</p>
<p><strong>Gage</strong>: Yes, it’s certainly helpful. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was more attention on constraining the power of the FBI and the other intelligence agencies, particularly coming out of the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/investigations/ChurchCommittee.htm">Church Committee</a>, which was formed in 1975 to study government operations, especially intelligence activity. But then the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm">Patriot Act</a> and 9/11 broadened intelligence agencies’ powers. We also see many instances of surveillance that people have challenged as either politically inappropriate or unconstitutional. For instance, in the 1980s, after Hoover’s death and shakeups at the FBI, the bureau was still conducting surveillance of left-wing organizations. </p>
<p>It hasn’t been a steady trend, but the constraints matter. They don’t solve every problem – the FBI remains in a funny position where it’s a law enforcement agency, but it’s also an intelligence agency.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A historian and biographer of J. Edgar Hoover answers questions on how FBI director James Comey is handling a position with a dark past.Brian Balogh, Compton Professor at the Miller Center and the Corcoran Department of History, University of VirginiaBeverly Gage, Professor of History, Yale UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/679672016-11-01T02:49:40Z2016-11-01T02:49:40ZRestoring transparency and fairness to the FBI investigation of Clinton emails<p>The New York Times and other national media sources are reporting that late Sunday night, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/us/politics/justice-department-warrant-clinton-abedin-fbi.html?_r=0">FBI obtained a search warrant</a> to examine email messages belonging to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The messages were stored on a laptop belonging to her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner. The laptop was seized by the agency in connection with an investigation into <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3790824/Anthony-Weiner-carried-months-long-online-sexual-relationship-troubled-15-year-old-girl-telling-hard-asking-dress-school-girl-outfits-pressing-engage-rape-fantasies.html">Weiner’s alleged sexting with a 15-year-old</a> North Carolina girl. </p>
<p>The emails are clearly Abedin’s property, even if they were backed up on her husband’s computer. (If they jointly owned the computer, her ownership would be even clearer.) Under the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_41">federal rules of criminal procedure</a>, the owner of property seized under a search warrant must be given a copy of the warrant and an inventory of what was taken. Has she received a copy or an inventory? </p>
<p>According to a statement issued Oct. 31 by Abedin’s lawyer, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/hillary-clinton-huma-abedin-emails-fbi.html">the FBI has not contacted us</a>.” Though her lawyer said Abedin “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/hillary-clinton-huma-abedin-emails-fbi.html">will continue to be, as she always has been, forthcoming and cooperative</a>,” <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/huma-abedin-emails-clinton-weiner-comey-230512">she has been kept completely in the dark</a> over the past month while the FBI has been prowling around in Weiner’s laptop.</p>
<p>Giving Abedin the warrant puts her in the position to exercise important legal rights. If it contains provisions that go beyond the constitutional limits on search warrants, she could even challenge the government’s assertion that the warrant was legal at all. Upon receiving the warrant, Abedin could also choose to share it with the media and the general public. That would bring much-needed transparency to what has so far been a mysterious and troubling government operation brought precipitously to public attention less than two weeks before Election Day.</p>
<h2>Following one case to another</h2>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html?_r=0">letter sent to Congress Oct. 28</a>, FBI Director James Comey said the FBI “has learned” of the existence of emails “that may be pertinent” to the closed investigation of Clinton’s use of a personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state. He also said that although “the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant,” he had directed investigators “to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information.”</p>
<p>The FBI seized the computer on which those emails exist in early October under a search warrant seeking evidence of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/us/politics/fbi-hillary-clinton-email.html">Weiner’s “sexting” with a minor</a> and reportedly also <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/laptop-may-include-thousands-of-emails-linked-to-hillary-clintons-private-server-1477854957">for child pornography</a>. It has been reported that the FBI <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/us/politics/justice-department-warrant-clinton-abedin-fbi.html?_r=0">downloaded summary information, also called “metadata,” for the entire contents of the laptop</a>. That revealed the presence of Abedin’s emails. </p>
<p>At that point, agents <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/us/politics/justice-department-warrant-clinton-abedin-fbi.html?_r=0">delved deeper into the laptop</a>. They sought to determine the dates of the emails and the identities of the people who sent and received them. They were hoping to identify emails that passed through the private email server used by Clinton while she was secretary of state.</p>
<h2>Search warrants need specifics</h2>
<p>The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states that no search warrant can be issued unless it “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment">particularly describes the place to be searched and the things to be seized</a>.” In a 1976 case, the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/427/463/case.html">Supreme Court explained</a> that the provision prohibits “general, exploratory rummaging in a person’s belongings and prevents the seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another.”</p>
<p>In addition, federal rules of criminal procedure require officers or agents executing search warrants to “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_41">give a copy of the warrant</a> and a receipt for the property taken to the person from whom … the property was taken.” Abedin must get not only the warrant but also an inventory of the emails in question.</p>
<p>Once Abedin receives the warrant, she has several legal options to protect her rights. She could:</p>
<ol>
<li>Challenge its legality, asking for the government to show in open court that it had probable cause, sworn under oath, that any of these emails could be evidence of a federal crime. This is particularly relevant because back in July Comey had announced <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/us/politics/hillary-clinton-fbi-email-comey.html">there was no evidence</a> that Clinton’s use of the private email server was a crime. So why would the mere fact that Abedin had sent or received email linked to that server be probable cause to believe those emails were <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/huma-abedin-emails-clinton-weiner-comey-230512">evidence of a crime</a>?</li>
<li>Challenge its scope, arguing the warrant isn’t properly limited to specifically described emails. As documented in <a href="http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/apple-and-the-american-revolution-remembering-why-we-have-the-fourth-amendment-1">my article published last week</a> by the <a href="http://www.yalelawjournal.org/">Yale Law Journal</a>, the FBI has a troubling history of abusing search warrant provisions to search <a href="https://theconversation.com/feds-we-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know-65620">vast troves of email messages</a>. So it’s possible – even likely – that the FBI’s warrant is too broad.</li>
<li>Challenge the method of execution, demanding the warrant specify legal protections so government investigators will only read the specific messages described in the warrant. Her privacy rights mean government investigators shouldn’t be able to read unrelated emails of hers that happen to be on the laptop.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Time for new guidelines for handling digital data</h2>
<p>The method by which the FBI located this information is <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-getting-new-clinton-emails-did-the-fbi-violate-the-constitution-67906">also questionable</a>. It is almost certain that the warrant authorizing the search of Weiner’s laptop for evidence in the alleged sexting crime did not authorize looking at any emails belonging to Abedin. </p>
<p>The FBI itself has admitted that agents didn’t know the messages were on Weiner’s computer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/us/politics/justice-department-warrant-clinton-abedin-fbi.html?_r=0">until they began searching it</a>. So it appears as if the FBI agents barged ahead, examining information about Abedin’s messages despite their constitutional obligations.</p>
<p>In 2010 <a href="https://d3bsvxk93brmko.cloudfront.net/datastore/opinions/2010/09/13/05-10067.pdf">five federal judges reviewed</a> egregious misconduct in a federal search of computer data, and recommended that when a search warrant authorizes downloading a large set of data, the <a href="http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/apple-and-the-american-revolution-remembering-why-we-have-the-fourth-amendment-1">data should be placed under the control of a court-appointed third party</a>. <a href="https://d3bsvxk93brmko.cloudfront.net/datastore/opinions/2010/09/13/05-10067.pdf">The judges said</a>: “That third party should be prohibited from communicating any information learned during the search other than that covered by the warrant. Once the data has been segregated (and, if necessary, redacted), the government agents involved in the investigation should be allowed to examine only the information covered by the terms of the warrant.”</p>
<p>It seems clear that such a procedure should have been used when the Weiner laptop was initially seized and should be used now in handling Abedin’s email.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clark D. Cunningham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Huma Abedin’s emails belong to her; the search warrant should be served upon her. Once that happens, she can challenge the warrant’s legality.Clark D. Cunningham, W. Lee Burge Chair in Law & Ethics; Director, National Institute for Teaching Ethics & Professionalism, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/679062016-10-30T01:33:16Z2016-10-30T01:33:16ZIn getting ‘new’ Clinton emails, did the FBI violate the Constitution?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143783/original/image-20161029-15810-zmqpmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C140%2C2980%2C1135&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How is it holding up in this digital age?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Constitution_of_the_United_States,_page_1.jpg">U.S. National Archives and Records Administration</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>FBI Director James Comey’s Oct. 28 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html?_r=0">bombshell letter to Congress</a> – which has the potential to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/us/politics/comey-clinton-email-justice.html">affect the presidential election</a> – may be based on illegally obtained emails. </p>
<p>In his letter, Comey says <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html?_r=0">the FBI “has learned” of the existence of emails “that may be pertinent”</a> to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/us/politics/hillary-clinton-fbi-email-comey.html">closed investigation</a> of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state. He writes that although “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html?_r=0">the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant</a>,” he has directed investigators “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html?_r=0">to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information</a>.” As the nation’s <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ag/about-office">chief law enforcement officer</a>, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has the apolitical and urgent responsibility to determine whether these emails were obtained <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/comey-wrote-bombshell-letter-to-congress-before-fbi-had-reviewed-new-emails-220219586.html">in a manner consistent with the Constitution</a>.</p>
<p>We don’t know everything yet, but we know a fair amount already about these emails and how the FBI got them. Comey tells Congress that the FBI “learned” of the emails’ existence “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html?_r=0">in connection with an unrelated case</a>.” Multiple media sources are now reporting that they were <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/us/politics/fbi-hillary-clinton-email.html">found during the FBI’s investigation of allegations</a> that former Congressman Anthony Weiner <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3790824/Anthony-Weiner-carried-months-long-online-sexual-relationship-troubled-15-year-old-girl-telling-hard-asking-dress-school-girl-outfits-pressing-engage-rape-fantasies.html">sent sexual text messages</a> to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143779/original/image-20161029-15728-1n7nun7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143779/original/image-20161029-15728-1n7nun7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143779/original/image-20161029-15728-1n7nun7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143779/original/image-20161029-15728-1n7nun7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=732&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143779/original/image-20161029-15728-1n7nun7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143779/original/image-20161029-15728-1n7nun7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143779/original/image-20161029-15728-1n7nun7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Under FBI investigation: Anthony Weiner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAnthonyweiner.jpg">U.S. Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The FBI apparently seized a laptop from Weiner on which <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbi-to-conduct-new-investigation-of-emails-from-clintons-private-server/2016/10/28/0b1e9468-9d31-11e6-9980-50913d68eacb_story.html">more than 1,000 emails belonging to his estranged wife, Huma Abedin</a>, had been backed up. Abedin, who is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbi-to-conduct-new-investigation-of-emails-from-clintons-private-server/2016/10/28/0b1e9468-9d31-11e6-9980-50913d68eacb_story.html">currently vice chairman of the Clinton presidential campaign</a>, had served as deputy chief of staff to Clinton when she was secretary of state.</p>
<p>If the laptop was “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/us/politics/comey-clinton-email-justice.html">seized</a>” by the FBI, it’s unlikely that either Weiner or Abedin voluntarily turned over the emails. That means the agency needed to get a search warrant, by swearing to a judge there was probable cause to believe that data on the laptop contained evidence of the suspected “sexting” crime. Under the Constitution, the warrant should have specified exactly the information to be seized and searched, and thereby limited the FBI from looking through the entire contents of the laptop.</p>
<p>As a constitutional scholar, I have studied the FBI’s troubling history of <a href="https://theconversation.com/feds-we-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know-65620">deliberately abusing search warrant powers</a> to go on unconstitutional fishing expeditions through Americans’ email. It seems likely that happened again here.</p>
<h2>Was the search properly limited?</h2>
<p>The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states that no search warrant can be issued unless it “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment">particularly describes the place to be searched and the things to be seized</a>.” Did the warrant for Weiner’s laptop “particularly describe” emails sent to or received by Abedin while working at the State Department as material that could be seized as evidence of the alleged sexting crime? That seems highly unlikely. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143780/original/image-20161029-15799-11ek7hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143780/original/image-20161029-15799-11ek7hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143780/original/image-20161029-15799-11ek7hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143780/original/image-20161029-15799-11ek7hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143780/original/image-20161029-15799-11ek7hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143780/original/image-20161029-15799-11ek7hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143780/original/image-20161029-15799-11ek7hh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not aware of her husband’s alleged sexting: Huma Abedin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHumaAbedin-October2010.jpg">U.S. Department of State</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, why were federal agents looking at any emails belonging to the suspect’s estranged spouse? Surely the FBI didn’t think Abedin was involved in the alleged sexting crime.</p>
<p>The agents might make the implausible claim that they saw Abedin’s emails inadvertently when looking for evidence related to the sexting crime. But even then, the legal approach would have required seeking Abedin’s consent to review the emails. If she declined, the FBI could have sought a new search warrant for specific Abedin messages, swearing to a federal judge that there was probable cause those particular emails were evidence of a crime, presumably related to the State Department email investigation.</p>
<p>So far there are no reports that the FBI did either of these things. To the contrary, Comey’s own letter says <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/28/us/politics/fbi-letter.html?_r=0">the FBI has no idea</a> if the emails are even “significant.” So how could the FBI get a search warrant to review them?</p>
<h2>A regular pattern of FBI abuse</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143781/original/image-20161029-15821-cy0x9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143781/original/image-20161029-15821-cy0x9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143781/original/image-20161029-15821-cy0x9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143781/original/image-20161029-15821-cy0x9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143781/original/image-20161029-15821-cy0x9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143781/original/image-20161029-15821-cy0x9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143781/original/image-20161029-15821-cy0x9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dropping a bombshell: FBI Director James Comey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AComey-FBI-Portrait.jpg">FBI</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It may seem extreme to suspect that federal agents sworn to uphold the Constitution would deliberately violate it to go on an unauthorized fishing expedition through Weiner’s laptop. However, there is clear evidence that the FBI <a href="http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/apple-and-the-american-revolution-remembering-why-we-have-the-fourth-amendment-1">regularly and deliberately oversteps constitutional boundaries</a> with regard to <a href="https://theconversation.com/feds-we-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know-65620">Americans’ email messages</a>.</p>
<p>In one case now pending in New Jersey, the FBI went completely beyond the limits of a <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Ravelo/Ravelo-SearchWarrant-24Dec2014.pdf">search warrant</a> to download <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Ravelo/Ravelo-LtrFromFilterProsecutor-19Feb2016.pdf">the entire contents</a> of a lawyer’s cellphone. Incredibly, federal prosecutors in that case are telling a federal judge they can legally keep and use the downloaded data <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Ravelo/Ravelo-MotionToSuppress-GovtSupplementalResponse-12July2016.pdf">even if the judge rules it was obtained in violation of the Constitution</a>.</p>
<p>In New York City, federal court records reveal the government obtained another search warrant that clearly violated the Fourth Amendment. That one ordered Microsoft to turn over the entire contents of a web-based email account and authorized “<a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/USvMicrosoft-2dCir-warrant.pdf">email by email review</a>.”</p>
<h2>It is time for Congress to act</h2>
<p>There have been some preliminary efforts to rein in the FBI. Last spring, a <a href="https://homeland.house.gov/press/mccaul-warner-lead-bipartisan-coalition-to-establish-national-commission-on-digital-security/">bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress</a> that would begin the process. It would create a National Commission on Security and Technology Challenges <a href="https://homeland.house.gov/mccaul-warner-commission-2/">including experts from many sectors</a> such as law enforcement, the technology industry, the intelligence community, and the privacy and civil liberties communities. The commission <a href="https://homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2016.03.03_HR-4651-Commission.pdf">would review the laws about warrants for digital data and recommend changes</a> in how they should be used.</p>
<p>That effort followed the FBI’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/news-event/apple-fbi-case">ill-advised attempt to get a court order</a> forcing Apple to create and give to the government software eliminating the user privacy and <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/apple-vs-fbi-25241">security features of the iPhone</a>.</p>
<p>In the wake of this week’s new evidence of further overstepping by the FBI, passing this bill should be one of the first tasks for Congress when it reconvenes after the election. Searches such as the likely illegal one conducted on Weiner’s laptop should be discovered, documented and prevented in the future.</p>
<h2>How to handle the emails now</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143782/original/image-20161029-15816-ixkcpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143782/original/image-20161029-15816-ixkcpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143782/original/image-20161029-15816-ixkcpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143782/original/image-20161029-15816-ixkcpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143782/original/image-20161029-15816-ixkcpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143782/original/image-20161029-15816-ixkcpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143782/original/image-20161029-15816-ixkcpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Time to act: Attorney General Loretta Lynch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ALoretta_Lynch%2C_official_portrait.jpg">U.S. Department of Justice</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Attorney General Lynch should immediately press Comey for details about what steps he took to determine that these emails were obtained legally. Can the FBI show that a proper warrant authorized seizure of those particular emails? If the agency cannot do so, she should consider the <a href="http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/apple-and-the-american-revolution-remembering-why-we-have-the-fourth-amendment-1">recommendations of several federal judges</a> for how to handle digital data. </p>
<p>Specifically, the messages should be immediately turned over to an independent court officer for any further review. Lynch could, for example, ask the chief judge of the federal district handling the Weiner investigation to appoint a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/special_master">court-supervised special master</a> to take charge of the emails. Using procedures fair to both law enforcement and the owner of the email, that person could determine if they reveal evidence of a crime. And Lynch should explain to the American people exactly what the FBI agents did legally, and admit if they acted outside the law.</p>
<h2>Stepping up to preserve Americans’ rights</h2>
<p>The Fourth Amendment was written in response to the abusive use of search warrants by the government of King George III. Specifically, Americans objected to searches of the homes of political dissidents, <a href="http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/apple-and-the-american-revolution-remembering-why-we-have-the-fourth-amendment-1">which examined all a person’s private papers</a> in hopes of finding evidence to imprison him.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/History/Wilkes/EntickvCarrington95EngRep807-1765.pdf">one case successfully challenging this practice</a>, the lawyer for the victim of such a search spoke words that ring true today:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Ransacking a man’s secret drawers and boxes to come at evidence against him is like racking his body to come at his secret thoughts. Has [the government] a right to see all a man’s private letters of correspondence, family concerns, trade and business? This would be monstrous indeed; and if it were lawful, no man could endure to live in this country.”</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clark D. Cunningham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The FBI has a history of abusing search warrants to illegally read Americans’ emails. Did the agency just do it again, in the highest of all high-profile situations?Clark D. Cunningham, W. Lee Burge Chair in Law & Ethics; Director, National Institute for Teaching Ethics & Professionalism, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/656202016-09-21T23:00:24Z2016-09-21T23:00:24ZFeds: We can read all your email, and you’ll never know<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138697/original/image-20160921-21691-wksiq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The feds say they can secretly read all your email.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-423265222/stock-photo-fbi-agent-working-on-his-computer-in-office.html">FBI agent with computer via shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fear of hackers reading private emails in cloud-based systems like Microsoft Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo has recently sent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/us/politics/email-hacking-colin-powell-congress.html">regular people and public officials scrambling</a> to delete entire accounts full of messages dating back years. What we don’t expect is our own government to hack our email – but it’s happening. Federal court cases <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Index.html">going on right now</a> are revealing that federal officials can read all your email without your knowledge.</p>
<p>As a scholar and lawyer who started researching and writing about the history and meaning of the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment">Fourth Amendment</a> to the Constitution <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Cunningham-MeaningsOfSearch.html">more than 30 years ago</a>, I immediately saw how the <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Index.html">FBI versus Apple controversy</a> earlier this year was <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/AppleAndTheAmericanRevolution-DraftAsOf7Sep.pdf">bringing the founders’ fight for liberty into the 21st century</a>. My study of that legal battle caused me to dig into the federal government’s actual practices for getting email from cloud accounts and cellphones, causing me to worry that our basic liberties are threatened.</p>
<h2>A new type of government search</h2>
<p>The federal government is getting access to the contents of entire email accounts by using an ancient procedure – the search warrant – with a new, sinister twist: secret court proceedings. </p>
<p>The earliest search warrants had a very limited purpose – authorizing entry to private premises to find and recover stolen goods. During the era of the American Revolution, <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/AppleAndTheAmericanRevolution-DraftAsOf7Sep.pdf">British authorities abused this power</a> to conduct dragnet searches of colonial homes and to seize people’s private papers looking for evidence of political resistance.</p>
<p>To prevent the new federal government from engaging in that sort of tyranny, special controls over search warrants were written into the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment">Fourth Amendment</a> to the Constitution. But these constitutional provisions are failing to protect our personal documents if they are stored in the cloud or on our smartphones.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the government’s efforts are finally being made public, thanks to legal battles taken up by Apple, Microsoft and other major companies. But the feds are fighting back, using even more subversive legal tactics.</p>
<h2>Searching in secret</h2>
<p>To get these warrants in the first place, the feds are using the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-121">Electronic Communications Privacy Act</a>, passed in 1986 – long before widespread use of cloud-based email and smartphones. That law allows the government to use a warrant to get electronic communications <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2703">from the company providing the service</a> – rather than the true owner of the email account, the person who uses it.</p>
<p>And the government <a href="http://harvardlpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Gagged-Sealed-and-Delivered.pdf">then usually asks that the warrant be “sealed,”</a> which means it won’t appear in public court records and will be hidden from you. Even worse, the law lets the government get what is called a “gag order,” a court ruling <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/GagOrders/GagOrderDecisions.html">preventing the company from telling you</a> it got a warrant for your email. </p>
<p>You might never know that the government has been reading all of your email – or you might find out when you get charged with a crime based on your messages. </p>
<h2>Microsoft steps up</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/news-event/apple-fbi-case">Much was written</a> about <a href="http://www.npr.org/series/469827708/the-apple-fbi-debate-over-encryption">Apple’s successful fight</a> earlier this year to prevent the FBI from forcing the company to <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/apple-vs-fbi-25241">break the iPhone’s security system</a>. </p>
<p>But relatively little notice has come to a similar <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/MicrosoftWDWash.html">Microsoft effort on behalf of customers</a> that began in April 2016. The <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/MicrosoftvUS-WDWash-1stAmendedComplaint.pdf">company’s suit</a> argued that search warrants delivered to Microsoft for customers’ emails are violating regular people’s constitutional rights. (It also argued that being gagged violates Microsoft’s own First Amendment rights.)</p>
<p>Microsoft’s suit, filed in Seattle, says that over the course of 20 months in 2015 and 2016, it received <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/MicrosoftvUS-WDWash-1stAmendedComplaint.pdf">more than 3,000 gag orders – and that more than two-thirds of the gag orders were effectively permanent</a>, because they did not include end dates. Court documents supporting Microsoft <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/MicrosoftWDWash-Amicus-Cloud.html">describe thousands more gag orders</a> issued against Google, Yahoo, Twitter and other companies. Remarkably, <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/MicrosoftvUS%28WDWash%29-FormerOfficialsAmicus.pdf">three former chief federal prosecutors</a>, who collectively had authority for the Seattle region for every year from 1989 to 2009, and the retired head of the FBI’s Seattle office have also joined forces to support Microsoft’s position.</p>
<h2>The feds get everything</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138123/original/image-20160916-17008-1eu91gm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138123/original/image-20160916-17008-1eu91gm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138123/original/image-20160916-17008-1eu91gm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138123/original/image-20160916-17008-1eu91gm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138123/original/image-20160916-17008-1eu91gm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138123/original/image-20160916-17008-1eu91gm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138123/original/image-20160916-17008-1eu91gm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138123/original/image-20160916-17008-1eu91gm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This search warrant clearly spells out who the government thinks controls email accounts – the provider, not the user.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s very difficult to get a copy of one of these search warrants, thanks to orders sealing files and gagging companies. But in <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft2dCir.html">another Microsoft lawsuit</a> against the government <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/USvMicrosoft-2dCir-warrant.pdf">a redacted warrant</a> was made part of the court record. It shows how the government asks for – and receives – the power to look at all of a person’s email.</p>
<p>On the first page of the warrant, the cloud-based email account is clearly treated as “premises” controlled by Microsoft, not by the email account’s owner:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“An application by a federal law enforcement officer or an attorney for the government requests the search of the following … property located in the Western District of Washington, the premises known and described as the email account [REDACTED]@MSN.COM, which is controlled by Microsoft Corporation.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/fourth_amendment">Fourth Amendment</a> requires that a search warrant must “particularly describe the things to be seized” and there must be “probable cause” based on sworn testimony that those particular things are evidence of a crime. But this warrant orders Microsoft to turn over “the contents of <strong>all</strong> e-mails stored in the account, including copies of e-mails sent from the account.” From the day the account was opened to the date of the warrant, everything must be handed over to the feds.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138124/original/image-20160916-17005-1kpmlly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138124/original/image-20160916-17005-1kpmlly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138124/original/image-20160916-17005-1kpmlly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138124/original/image-20160916-17005-1kpmlly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138124/original/image-20160916-17005-1kpmlly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=267&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138124/original/image-20160916-17005-1kpmlly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138124/original/image-20160916-17005-1kpmlly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138124/original/image-20160916-17005-1kpmlly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The warrant orders Microsoft to turn over every email in an account – including every sent message.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reading all of it</h2>
<p>In warrants like this, the government is deliberately not limiting itself to the constitutionally required “particular description” of the messages it’s looking for. To get away with this, it tells judges that incriminating emails can be hard to find – maybe even hidden with misleading names, dates and file attachments – so their computer forensic experts need access to the whole data base to work their magic. </p>
<p>If the government were serious about obeying the Constitution, when it asks for an entire email account, at least it would write into the warrant <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Waxse/HotmailCase.html">limits on its forensic analysis</a> so only emails that are evidence of a crime could be viewed. But this Microsoft warrant says an unspecified “variety of techniques may be employed to search the seized emails,” including “email by email review.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138125/original/image-20160916-16988-17ygblc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138125/original/image-20160916-16988-17ygblc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138125/original/image-20160916-16988-17ygblc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=165&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138125/original/image-20160916-16988-17ygblc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=165&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138125/original/image-20160916-16988-17ygblc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=165&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138125/original/image-20160916-16988-17ygblc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=208&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138125/original/image-20160916-16988-17ygblc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=208&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138125/original/image-20160916-16988-17ygblc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=208&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The right to read every email.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As I explain in a forthcoming paper, there is good reason to suspect this type of warrant is <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/AppleAndTheAmericanRevolution-DraftAsOf7Sep.pdf">the government’s usual approach</a>, not an exception.</p>
<p>Former federal computer-crimes prosecutor <a href="https://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/ohm-paul.cfm">Paul Ohm</a> says <a href="http://www.virginialawreview.org/volumes/content/massive-hard-drives-general-warrants-and-power-magistrate-judges">almost every federal computer search warrant</a> lacks the required particularity. Another former prosecutor, <a href="https://www.law.gwu.edu/orin-s-kerr">Orin Kerr</a>, who <a href="https://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1020905.files/SearchandSeizureDigital.pdf#page=49">wrote the first edition</a> of the <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/DOJ-Manual-Ch2.pdf">federal manual on searching computers</a>, agrees: “<a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=2628586">Everything can be seized. Everything can be searched</a>.” Even some federal judges are calling attention to the problem, <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/WhatsWrongWithCellPhoneSearchWarrants.html">putting into print their objections to signing such warrants</a> – but unfortunately most <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Facciola/Facciola-RedactedMac.Com-DistrictJudge.pdf">judges seem all too willing to go along</a>.</p>
<h2>What happens next</h2>
<p>If Microsoft wins, then citizens will have the chance to see these search warrants and challenge the ways they violate the Constitution. But the government has come up with a clever – and sinister – argument for throwing the case out of court before it even gets started. </p>
<p>The government has asked the judge in the case to rule that Microsoft has <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/Microsoft%20v%20DOJ%20Motion%20to%20Dismiss.pdf">no legal right</a> to raise the Constitutional rights of its customers. Anticipating this move, the American Civil Liberties Union <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/MicrosoftvDOJ-ACLUProposedIntervention.pdf">asked to join the lawsuit</a>, saying it uses Outlook and wants notice if Microsoft were served with a warrant for its email. </p>
<p>The government’s response? The ACLU has no right to sue because it <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/US%20v%20Microsoft%20Docket%2033-DOJBriefInOppositionToACLUIntervention.pdf">can’t prove that there has been or will be a search warrant</a> for its email. Of course the point of the lawsuit is to protect citizens who can’t prove they are subject to a search warrant because of the secrecy of the whole process. The government’s position is that no one in America has the legal right to challenge the way prosecutors are using this law.</p>
<h2>Far from the only risk</h2>
<p>The government is taking a similar approch to smartphone data. </p>
<p>For example, in the case of <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/USvRavelo.html">U.S. v. Ravelo</a>, pending in Newark, New Jersey, the government used a search warrant to download the entire contents of a lawyer’s personal cellphone – more than 90,000 items <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Ravelo/Ravelo-LtrFromFilterProsecutor-19Feb2016.pdf">including text messages, emails, contact lists and photos</a>. When the phone’s owner <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Ravelo/Ravelo-MotionToSuppress-29Apr2016.pdf">complained to a judge</a>, the <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Ravelo/Ravelo-MotionToSuppress-GovtResponse-23May2016.pdf">government argued</a> it could look at everything (except for privileged lawyer-client communications) before the court even issued a ruling. </p>
<p>The federal prosecutor for New Jersey, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/meet-us-attorney">Paul Fishman</a>, has gone even farther, telling the judge that once the government has cloned the cellphone it gets to keep the copies it has of all 90,000 items <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Ravelo/Ravelo-MotionToSuppress-GovtSupplementalResponse-12July2016.pdf">even if the judge rules that the cellphone search violated</a> the Constitution.</p>
<p>Where does this all leave us now? The judge in <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/USvRavelo.html">Ravelo</a> is expected to issue a preliminary ruling on the feds’ arguments sometime in October. The government will be filing a final brief on its motion to dismiss <a href="http://clarkcunningham.org/Apple/Cases/Microsoft/MicrosoftWDWash.html">the Microsoft case</a> September 23. All Americans should be watching carefully to what happens next in these cases – the government may be already watching you without your knowledge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clark D. Cunningham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We don’t expect our own government to hack our email – but it’s happening, in secret, and if current court cases go badly, we may never know how often.Clark D. Cunningham, W. Lee Burge Chair in Law & Ethics; Director, National Institute for Teaching Ethics & Professionalism, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/622712016-07-13T23:17:38Z2016-07-13T23:17:38ZHow did classified information get into those Hillary Clinton emails?<p>Last week FBI director James Comey publicly rebuked Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information while she was secretary of state. This came at the conclusion of the FBI’s investigation of her use of a personal email server. He <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/oversight-state-department/">subsequently testified</a> on the matter before the House Oversight Committee. Comey reported that of more than 30,000 emails sent and received by Clinton, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/us/transcript-james-comey-hillary-clinton-emails.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article">110 contained classified information</a> with eight email chains containing “information that was top secret at the time they were sent.” Comey concluded that Clinton and her aides were “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”</p>
<p>How could the secretary of state and her aides be so careless with classified information? </p>
<p>What information is classified in the first place and by whom?</p>
<p>How does that information get transmitted? </p>
<p>The answer to the first question partly lies in the way sensitive information is handled and classified at the State Department and other U.S. government agencies. </p>
<p>An important thing to understand is that the determination of what information is classified is subjective. This means reasonable people can disagree about the relative sensitivity of particular information. </p>
<p>Before coming to academia, I worked for many years as an analyst at both the State Department and the Department of Defense. I held a top secret clearance and worked on issues related to weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation. Debates and arguments about whether certain information should be classified were frequent. More often than not the debates centered on why something was classified in the first place. This is why determining whether Secretary Clinton was careless is not a cut and dried issue. </p>
<h2>Classification levels and what gets classified</h2>
<p>The U.S. government uses <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-classified-national-security-information">three levels of classification</a> to designate how sensitive certain information is: confidential, secret and top secret. </p>
<p>The lowest level, confidential, designates information that if released could damage U.S. national security. The other designations refer to information the disclosure of which could cause “serious” (secret) or “exceptionally grave” (top secret) damage to national security. </p>
<p>At the top secret level, some information is “compartmented.” That means only certain people who have a top secret security clearance may view it. Sometimes this information is given a code word so that only those cleared for that particular code word can access the information. There are several other designators restricting access even to cleared personnel. For example, only those holding a secret or top secret clearance and the critical nuclear weapon design information designation are allowed to access information related to many aspects of the operation and design of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>It is common for documents to contain information that is classified at different levels as well as unclassified information. Individual paragraphs are marked to indicate the level of classification. For example, a document’s title might be preceded with the marker (U) indicating the title and existence of the document is unclassified. </p>
<p>Within a document, paragraphs might carry the markers “S” for secret, “C” for confidential or “TS” for top secret. The highest classification of any portion of the document determines its overall classification. This approach allows for the easy identification and removal of classified portions of a document so that less sensitive sections can be shared in unclassified settings. </p>
<p>This is what Clinton was trying to do with the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/01/10/hillary-clinton-says-nonpaper-email-a-nonissue/">“nonpaper”</a> that she <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/265367-clinton-defends-telling-aid-to-send-data-through-nonsecure-channel">instructed her aide</a> Jake Sullivan to fix so that it could be sent over a nonsecure fax machine. </p>
<h2>Not quite confidential</h2>
<p>Below the confidential level, there are varying terms for information that is not classified but still sensitive. </p>
<p>Government agencies use different terms for this category of information. The State Department uses the phrase “sensitive but unclassified,” while the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security use “for official use only.” These markers are often seen in the headers and footers of documents just like classified designations.</p>
<h2>Who decides what is classified?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2010-01-05/pdf/E9-31418.pdf">Executive Order 13256</a> spells out who specifically may classify information.</p>
<p>Authority to take certain pieces of information, say the existence of a weapons program, and classify it top secret is given only to specific individuals including the president and vice president, agency heads and those specifically designated by authorities outlined in the executive order. Information that is being retransmitted or integrated into other documents retains its original classification level. Inserting one sentence that is classified secret into an otherwise unclassified document makes the entire document secret. </p>
<p>Some things clearly need to be kept secret, like the identity of covert operatives or battle plans. Other issues are not as obvious. Should the mere fact that the secretary of state had a conversation with a counterpart be classified? In fact, different agencies disagree about issues like this all the time. In the Clinton case, the State Department disagreed with the intelligence community about whether certain emails contained information that should be classified.</p>
<p>When Secretary Clinton began turning over emails as part of an investigation into the Benghazi, Libya attacks, the inspector general (IG) for the intelligence community assessed that information in several of them was classified and should not have been transmitted over an open email system. </p>
<p>But the State Department disagreed with the IG’s assessment.</p>
<h2>Handling classified information</h2>
<p>Media sometimes erroneously refer to Clinton as having shared classified documents. This is not something she is accused of. It is extremely difficult to share a classified document electronically over email. Most government agencies, including the State Department, maintain separate systems precisely to make it all but impossible to electronically pass information between classified and unclassified systems. </p>
<p>One cannot simply view a document on a classified network and email it to someone on an unclassified system even within the same agency. This is partly why Clinton and her aides say so assuredly that they did not knowingly email classified materials. </p>
<p>The issue is whether she and her aides should have known that matters discussed in emails were classified or sensitive. In fact, in several of the released emails she and aides take pains to avoid discussing classified matters.</p>
<p>In discussing normal business, it may not be evident that certain specific topics are classified. Is the entire conversation the secretary has with a foreign leader classified? Are parts of it? Is the fact that the conversation took place classified? It depends on subject matter and context, and the assessment is subjective. In the normal course of business, however, a government employee may decide that the subject matter is not sensitive and discuss the conversation over an unclassified system.</p>
<p>But other more complicated issues arise. For example, the U.S. government cannot acknowledge drone strikes carried out by the CIA. That information remains classified even if revealed in the media. Thus, discussing them over an unclassified system would not be allowed. However, drone strikes carried out by the Department of Defense are not subject to such restrictions. This distinction <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/07/hillary_s_email_scandal_was_overhyped.html">may be one</a> of the key contentions the intelligence community has with some information in the Clinton emails.</p>
<p>The fact is government officials inadvertently send classified details over unclassified email systems all the time. Considering the amount of information dealt with on a daily basis, it is inevitable. Classified details are accidentally revealed in casual conversations and media interviews. We may not hear about it because it’s not in the interviewee’s interest to point that out after the fact. </p>
<p>A colleague and former CIA analyst tells his students he would never knowingly but almost certainly will inadvertently relate in the classroom a tidbit that is classified. The classic example is when Senator David Boren accidentally revealed the name of a clandestine CIA agent. Boren at the time was no less than chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. </p>
<p>In that light, Clinton may have been careless, but she’s certainly not alone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey Fields receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the MacArthur Foundation. </span></em></p>An academic who used to hold top secret security clearance explains how things get classified and why the Clinton email scandal is hard to nail down.Jeffrey Fields, Assistant Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/611242016-06-29T10:13:18Z2016-06-29T10:13:18ZFrom dating profiles to Brexit – how to spot an online lie<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128552/original/image-20160628-7822-14pcn3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A world of deceit.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=lie%20detector&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=140770462">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are three things you can be sure of in life: death, taxes – and lying. The latter certainly appears to have been borne out by the UK’s recent Brexit referendum, with a <a href="http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/8-of-the-most-misleading-promises-of-the-vote-leave-campaign-ranked-in-order-of-preposterousness--WyxD59VO3Nb">number</a> of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/opinion/britain-to-leave-europe-for-a-lie.html?_r=0">Leave campaign’s</a> pledges <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/brexit-lies-opening-terrifying-new-opportunity-far-right-britain/">looking more</a> like <a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/287750.html">porkie pies</a> than solid truths.</p>
<p>But from internet advertising, visa applications and academic articles to political blogs, insurance claims and dating profiles, there are countless places we can tell digital lies. So how can one go about spotting these online fibs? Well, we, along with Ko de Ruyter from City University London’s Cass Business School and Mike Friedman of the Catholic University of Louvain, have developed a digital lie detector – and it can uncover a whole host of internet untruths.</p>
<p><a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=2576197">In our new research</a>, we used linguistic cues to compare tens of thousands of emails pre-identified as lies with those known to be truthful. And from this comparison, we developed a text analytic algorithm that can detect deception. It works on three levels.</p>
<h2>1. Word use</h2>
<p>Keyword searches can be a reasonable approach when dealing with large amounts of digital data. So, we first uncovered differences in word usage between the two document sets. These differences identify text that is likely to contain a lie. We found that individuals who lie generally use fewer personal pronouns, such as I, you, and he/she, and more adjectives, such as brilliant, fearless, and sublime. They also use fewer first-person singular pronouns, such as I, me, mine, with discrepancy words, such as could, should, would, as well as more second-person pronouns (you, your) with achievement words (earn, hero, win).</p>
<p>Fewer personal pronouns indicate an author’s attempt to dissociate themselves from their words, while using more adjectives is an attempt to distract from the lie through a flurry of superfluous descriptions. Fewer first-person singular pronouns combined with discrepancy words indicate a lack of subtlety and a positive self-image, while more second-person pronouns combined with achievement words indicate an attempt to flatter recipients. We therefore included these combinations of search terms in our algorithm.</p>
<h2>2. Structure scrutiny</h2>
<p>Another part of the solution lay in analysing the variance of cognitive process words, such as cause, because, know and ought – and we identified a relationship between structure words and lies. </p>
<p>Liars cannot generate deceptive emails from actual memory so they avoid spontaneity to evade detection. That does not mean that liars use more cognitive process words overall than people who are telling the truth, but they do include these words more consistently. For example, they tend to connect every sentence to the next – “we know this happened because of this, because this ought to be the case”. Our algorithm detects such usage of process words in communications.</p>
<h2>3. Cross-email approach</h2>
<p>We also studied the ways in which a sender of an email alters their linguistic style while exchanging a number of emails with someone else. This part of the study revealed that as the exchange went on, the more the sender tended to use the function words that the receiver was using. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128646/original/image-20160629-15251-3sjqv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/128646/original/image-20160629-15251-3sjqv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128646/original/image-20160629-15251-3sjqv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128646/original/image-20160629-15251-3sjqv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128646/original/image-20160629-15251-3sjqv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128646/original/image-20160629-15251-3sjqv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/128646/original/image-20160629-15251-3sjqv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Looking for love: but are they lying?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&searchterm=dating%20profile&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=320117351">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Function words are words that contribute to the syntax, or structure, rather the meaning of a sentence – for example an, am, to. And senders revised the linguistic style of their messages to match that of the receiver. As a consequence, our algorithm identifies and collects such matching.</p>
<h2>Exciting applications</h2>
<p>Consumer watchdogs can use this technology to assign a “possibly lying” score to advertisements of a dubious nature. Security companies and national border forces can use the algorithm to assess documents, such as visa applications and landing cards, to better monitor compliance with access and entry rules and regulations. Secretaries of higher education exam committees and editors of academic journals can improve their proofing tools for automatically checking student theses and academic articles for plagiarism. </p>
<p>In fact, the potential applications go on and on. Political blogs can successfully monitor their social media interactions for textual anomalies, while dating and review sites can classify messages submitted by users on the basis of their “possibly lying” score. Insurance companies can make better use of their time and resources available for claim auditing. Accountants, tax advisers, and forensic specialists can investigate financial statements and tax claims and find deceptive smoking guns through our algorithm. </p>
<p>Humans are startlingly bad at consciously detecting deception. Indeed, <a href="http://psr.sagepub.com/content/10/3/214.abstract">human accuracy when it comes to spotting a lie is just 54%</a>, hardly better than chance. Our digital lie detector, meanwhile, is 70% accurate. It can be put to work to fight fraud wherever it occurs in computerised content and as the technology evolves, its Pinocchio warnings can be wholly automated and its accuracy will increase even further. Just as Pinocchio’s nose reflexively signalled falsehood, so does our digital lie detector. Fibbers beware.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fibbers beware: experts have developed a new digital lie detector.Tom van Laer, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, City, University of LondonStephan Ludwig, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/544072016-02-15T03:52:24Z2016-02-15T03:52:24ZNot dead yet: how email has survived and continues to thrive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110909/original/image-20160210-3288-abu4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Love it or hate it, we still use email.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Melpomene</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ask around – everyone has an opinion about their email and their inbox, and it’s not always positive.</p>
<p>From <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/kill-off-email-to-boost-productivity-20140411-zqtik.html">information overload</a>, <a href="http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131913-15-of-the-best-email-apps-to-help-you-achieve-inbox-zero">zero inbox</a> and <a href="http://gawker.com/more-embarrassing-emails-the-sony-hack-b-sides-1698557943">leaked email scandals</a> to the much-hyped triumph of workflow software like <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/12/5991005/slack-is-killing-email-yes-really">Slack</a> and <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/01/next-big-thing-missed-facebook-co-founder-says-email/">Asana</a>, email has certainly had <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/06/in-a-world-where-email-no-longer-exists/">a bad rap recently</a>.</p>
<p>Email has been with us for about 45 years, since the <a href="https://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2002/cmsc434-0101/MUIseum/applications/firstemail.html">first such electronic message</a> was sent in 1971. The death of email was first predicted in 1989. Back then, it was the fax that apparently signalled its <a href="http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/harmful.html">ultimate end</a>. Yet despite stories of its demise, virtually every internet user has an email account and 38% have three or more. (And how many people use a fax machine these days?)</p>
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<p>But how much do we know about how Australians use email? Do people send personal emails from work? Do they use encryption?</p>
<h2>National survey on email use</h2>
<p>Last year, Swinburne University launched the first national survey of 1,000 people about their email use.</p>
<p>Although previous studies have explored it as part of a suite of other <a href="http://gizmodo.com/email-is-the-new-generation-gap-1743697716">communication technologies</a>, we delved deeper into people’s specific email practices, habits and attitudes. </p>
<p>Far from being in its death throes, what we found is that email dominates the workplace and, perhaps surprisingly, still rates against social media as a platform for personal communication.</p>
<p>Our survey included questions about how often people checked email, what devices and software they used and how they managed their work and social email accounts.</p>
<p>What we learned is that people distinguish between email for work and for private or personal use. Eight in ten of employed Australians generally have separate accounts for work and personal use. Despite this, nearly four in ten people said they do send some personal emails from their work account.</p>
<p>Nearly a half of those in the workforce check their email every hour or more often while a further 45% check several times a day.</p>
<p>Email and face-to-face talking are in close competition as the most frequently used mode of communication at work, with 84.1% using email “often or quite often” compared to 85.6% for face-to-face.</p>
<p>The corresponding figure for the up and coming internal social network programs such as Slack, Yammer or Asana is 12.5%, which has yet to get to the level of fax (16.2%). A quarter of workers use social media “often or quite often” to communicate at work while the phone remains popular at 78.7%.</p>
<h2>Email is alive and kicking</h2>
<p>Figures like these certainly challenge the prevailing, and by now decades old, death of email narrative. Just three in ten respondents agreed that email had been replaced by social media, and fewer than one in five workers said they used email less often than they did five years ago.</p>
<p>But what are people saying in these emails? And what do they think about their workplace having the right to access their email account?</p>
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<p>In our survey, 56% of people felt their employer should not have the right to access their email accounts. Others, however, thought it was justifiable for employers to have email access if “suspicious activity” was detected, or if employees were “taking advantage of work time”.</p>
<p>Somewhat chillingly, one IT manager revealed their particular position gave them a “vast amount of access” to workplace emails, a privilege they fully exercised.</p>
<p>Rationalising the action in terms of job security, the respondent said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have abused my administrative powers to access email to find out what is planned for me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This manager was not alone. In answer to the question “Have you ever read someone’s email without their knowledge?” 18% confessed they had taken a peek with occupational position high on the list of explanations.</p>
<p>One temporary administrative support worker admitted to having “looked at the personal emails of the girl I was replacing” because there was not enough work to do in the temp role.</p>
<p>Reading other people’s emails also happens accidentally. In the <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/11/12/public-privacy-perceptions/">post-Snowden world</a>, it turns out that the humble printer room is actually rife with clandestine activity as a number of people reported picking up and reading emails not intended for them.</p>
<h2>What security?</h2>
<p>Given all these opportunities for exposure, it’s surprising more people aren’t actively protecting their accounts. While 41.3% of respondents felt concerned about email privacy and security only 13% used encryption software.</p>
<p>But it’s not all about workplace surveillance. Email is still a key method to keep in touch with friends and family with 66% using it for this purpose and nearly a half sharing photographs via email.</p>
<p>Overall, our research found that email may be boring, it may have been with us for a long time and it may not have a 30-something billionaire proprietor to provide narrative interest but there is no evidence that it is going away anytime soon.</p>
<p>Perhaps like many mature technologies, it has been so integrated into people’s lives that it barely registers as a “thing” at all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54407/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Esther Milne receives funding from the Low Carbon Living CRC for the project Media and Communication Strategies to Achieve Carbon Reduction in Australian Renovations.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Ewing is a lead researcher on the Australian Digital Inclusion Index funded by Telstra and the Household Broadband Project funded by Cisco.</span></em></p>Email has been around for many decades and its death has been predicted many times. Love it or hate it, we still need it for communication at work and in our private lives.Esther Milne, Associate Professor of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of TechnologyScott Ewing, Senior Research Fellow - The Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.