Have you been reading my email?

Editor's note: This is part of an ongoing series for consumers about Internet issues.

You go to the mailbox to retrieve your letters, bills, and advertisements. There, you're surprised to find your neighbor as well as a stranger examining your envelopes. They've also opened several of the envelopes and read the contents inside them.

Your reaction? I will not venture a guess, as this is a family newspaper, but I would speculate it would not be one of acceptance. Yet this situation is identical to what is happening to our Internet correspondence, our email. To frame the issue, which I hope will raise your concern about privacy in the Internet, I will start with two questions pertaining to postal service mail:

* Should anyone but the recipient of a letter be allowed to read and record the information on the envelope?

* Should anyone but the recipient of this envelope be allowed to read and record the information in the letter that was placed inside the envelope?

I suspect your answer is no to both questions. If so, next question: Why should we relinquish this right of privacy because our letters are written in electronic images instead of ink or pencil?

Some will answer: The Internet is not the U.S. Postal Service. True, but the Internet was founded courtesy of the American taxpayer and the U.S. government. Furthermore, at the rate citizens are moving from conventional mail to electronic mail, it is reasonable to assume Internet mail will supplant U.S. mail as the dominant medium for sending and receiving correspondence.

Given this trend, by calling our letter "email" instead of "mail," and using a salutation of "Hi" instead of "Dear," does that relinquish our rights to seclusion? Why should this private space to ourselves and those to whom we send correspondence suddenly become space for everyone to share?

By changing the delivery mechanism for our message - from the postal service to the Internet - our envelopes can be opened and our letters read. Not just by Uncle Sam's NSA. Not just by Google. Eventually, by anyone. Think about that idea for a minute or two, because that is where we are heading.

Last question, what has happened, in only 30 years or so, for our society to reach a point in which the CEO of Google states:

... after privacy concerns were raised... Eric Schmidt, declared: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

I place Mr. Schmidt's quote in bold type because his assertion is straight out of an Orwellian scenario. Eric Schmidt is the chief executive officer of the most powerful and influential Internet-based company on Earth.

He implies nothing is out of bounds to be examined: Your letter to your siblings about your parents' failing health; your debate with the IRS about your taxes; a credit card transaction; your "Dear John" to Joan; Joan's "Dear John" to you.

According to Schmidt, the Internet has altered the game. Cyberspace, because it is no longer a pen-and-ink world, renders our right to privacy irrelevant. After all, we have nothing to hide. Nothing to hide except one of the most treasured aspects of our nature: Our privacy, our right to be left alone.

On the Aug. 24 program 60 Minutes, an Internet vendor said, "The Internet is an advertising medium." In fewer than three decades, the Internet has evolved from a network dedicated to the exchange of personal electronic mail and small files to one where this person declares it to be dedicated to selling various wares. How are these wares sold? By the sellers increasingly obtaining more-and-more personal information about you and me.

The second article in this series will offer some ideas on how to seal your electronic email envelope. The suggestions will not protect the privacy of the addresses on the outside of the envelope, nor will they necessarily stem the tide of Internet advertisements. But they will offer ways to protect the contents inside the envelope: our personal correspondence.

By the way, don't throw away your postage stamps. They may come in handy.

Tomorrow: The conclusion, Have you been reading my mail?