Court Bars Fired Intel Worker’s Mass E-Mails

Sending mass unsolicited e-mail to a company’s employees is an illegal form of trespass, according to a California court ruling in a case involving Intel Corp. and a disgruntled former employee.

The ruling sets a new legal boundary between private computer networks and the public spheres they abut on the Internet, and raises what some consider troubling questions about free-speech protections online.

The case marks the first time a court has considered whether a company can fence off its employees from incoming e-mail, let alone block content that in other settings would be considered constitutionally protected speech.

“We’re really concerned that sending an e-mail can now be considered a trespass,” said Shari Steele, director of legal services for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. “That has huge ramifications for the way that e-mail is done.”

The case centered on a barrage of critical e-mail directed at Intel employees by a former worker, Ken Hamidi, who has had a long-running feud with the semiconductor giant about workers’ compensation claims and other issues.

Granting Intel’s request for summary judgment in the case, a Superior Court judge in Sacramento on Tuesday issued a permanent injunction halting Hamidi’s e-mail campaign.

Sweeping aside a number of free-speech arguments, Judge John R. Lewis compared borders between computer networks to property boundaries, and said “the mere connection of Intel’s e-mail system with the Internet does not convert it into a public forum.”

Hamidi, 52, said Wednesday that he will abide by the ruling but plans to appeal. “I feel it is my duty to carry on this flag,” he said. “It’s not just my personal thing anymore.”

Hamidi, who was fired by Intel in 1995, has been a persistent critic of the company. He provoked its suit by sending e-mail to more than 30,000 Intel employees on several occasions last year, criticizing the company and spreading rumors about layoffs.

The case has been followed closely by legal scholars and is examined in detail in next month’s edition of the Harvard Law Review. Some experts said Lewis sidestepped the 1st Amendment and that the ruling it is not likely to be the final word on this issue.

“In the real world, trespass involves physical presence,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a law lecturer at Harvard. “But in this case, it’s his speech they’re restricting.”

Intel attorneys applauded the ruling and said the company only wanted the right to control access to computer networks it has spent millions of dollars building solely for the business use of its employees.

“We see this as akin to someone walking in and demanding we use our mail-delivery system to take a memo around and put it on people’s chairs,” said Coeta Chambers, an Intel attorney. “We don’t have to do that, and nobody would.”

Chambers said the company never set out to censor Hamidi--a former engineer at the company’s Folsom, Calif., location--and pointed out that he continues to operate a Web site that is critical of the company.

The judge found Intel’s trespass claim so persuasive that he imposed the injunction against Hamidi before the case had even gone to trial.

“Intel has been injured by diminished employee productivity and in devoting company resources to [e-mail] blocking efforts and to addressing employees about Hamidi’s e-mails,” Lewis wrote.

The ruling reinforces other decisions in federal court cases in which online services, including America Online and CompuServe, have prevailed against purveyors of “spam,” or unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Many thought this case might be different because the contents of the e-mails were legitimate, though often disputed, opinions about a public company and could not be dismissed as commercial spam.

But the judge noted that Intel has never published its employees’ e-mail addresses, and likened its computer system to private company property where the public is not allowed to gather.

Others fret that logic could affect much of the communication over the Net, which is largely made up of private networks and offers few truly “public” spaces.

“Speech that has to do with employment discrimination is exactly the kind of speech the 1st Amendment was designed to protect,” said Bill McSwain, author of the upcoming piece in the Harvard Law Review. “The way it’s been handled in this case shows a callous disregard for the 1st Amendment.”