This is illegal in my country unless you have permission of the court. Otherwise, you can be fined with around € 5000 ($ 6600), for the first offense ... I'm not sure if it would be legal even if the users would sign a contract that allows that. One for sure, it would have to be included in terms of service... PS: I know the servers are in Texas and it might even be legal in Texas, but still...
Well, I believe the New Republic shall benefit enormously from this. The people in the northern part of the NR are rather isolated from the south, so the ability to have everyone in one big channel will be of awesomesauce ^.^
Being able to intercept communication does not mean being allowed to. (I have several e-mail servers with hundreds of inboxes - as admin. I'm still not allowed to read peoples messages and I get nauseous feeling by the thought alone ...) Even if authorities would order me to provide access (hope that won't ever happen), I would have a very uneasy feeling intruding or helping intrusion in peoples private communication. An interesting aspect - If an EMC moderator from e.g. Germany would intercept private communication of an EMC player from Germany (or even another EU country), that would be illegal (in Germany), even with servers in Texas. (I'm not a lawyer and I'm not sure which laws apply in which order, but I'm quite sure that this is so...) This isn't an easy topic (for example: am I allowed, as admin, to make a backup copy of peoples e-mails? etc.) My intention here is to rise awareness of importance of protection of privacy and personal communication. Besides all of the legal issues, it is important for sanity of all members, all staff and the community as whole.
I have... absolutely no problem with this update at all. I'm curious if there's a max limit on the number of people in a group though?
As Alex stated above, they will be able to see it but it's not like they're going to use it against you unless you are reported. Even though staff are able to see what is written, they don't always just read it. This is just like anything else, it's just like a private server where you're able to see chat in the console. I don't see why this is such an issue since they can already see tells as well as any other chat we type in. For all we know (not saying they can) they can read our private messages on the site. The information in them is there to help, not hurt. If something happened in chat and they needed evidence it is there for that. It's just like those crime shows and real life where the government needs to read emails, you hand them over whether that's an invasion of privacy or not, though most of the time they have permission/documents saying hand them over.
We don't intercept the communication. An accurate way to describe how it works is this: You post something in chat, it is sent to the servers and stored in the database (Square) than the person receiving the message gets sent the message to their client. Than a Staff member can go back through Square and see what information passed through it. I know almost nothing about legal stuff, but it is not illegal. And is Nothing compared to the tracking of conversations done by the US government to "prevent terrorism" (I don't wish to talk any more about that) In conclusion; the safest place on EMC to have a "private communication" is through the conversation feature of the website because we can only see those messages if we are added to them.
The European law you are referring to would be European Law on Human Rights in which communication is considered private unless noted otherwise. In the terms and conditions there is a section referring to user content that states you allow EMC to make use, in any way, content you submit to EMC, this would include in game text. This clearly fulfils the unless stated part of the European law.
Correct, and as far as US law goes, users hold no right to privacy of their data when submitted to private entities group, even without a TOS agreement. The "rights to privacy" are only to the government. Additionally, as Davie pointed out, you agreed to our TOS on signup acknowledging we will use your chat in any way we deem. However as an American entity, we are not even required to follow other countries laws. But even for the European law, we are covered. ALL Chat in game is logged and has potential to be reviewed. This is true for nearly every US internet company. This subject is also off topic and is now over. Back to groups!
