Soldier Takes N.C. National Guard To Court Over E-mail

The conduct was based on comments Culbreth made in a 2003 e-mail -- an e-mail he said the Guard never had the right to read. The e-mail was sent from his personal computer at his house on a personal account to Col. Fred Aikens, who was on active duty in Kuwait at the time.

"I had a reasonable expectation of privacy between me and Col. Aikens. I don't think they had the right to get the e-mails that were gotten," Culbreth said.

Aikens agrees with Culbreth, saying his e-mail was illegally monitored back in North Carolina.

"His higher command in Kuwait knew nothing of his e-mails being taken from his account," Culbreth said.

Because of the pending litigation, the two men would not show WRAL the contents of the e-mail. However, both said Culbreth was merely venting about a promotion he did not receive.

"Soldiers moan and groan and complain all the time," Aikens said.

Both men expect the case of military monitoring to have a precedent-setting effect.

"Now if the North Carolina Guard has the legal authoritiy to do so, why don't they just say so? Why drag the state into a lawsuit," Aikens said.

Right now, the Attorney General's Office is trying to get the case thrown out of court. The government can monitor e-mail, but the lawsuit said the National Guard had no right to intercept e-mails that were sent overseas.

The number of e-mail boxes in the world grew from an estimated 500 million in 2002 to 36 billion now. With that growth, there is more debate about e-mail privacy.

Because employers own workplace computers, they have the right to monitor your e-mail. The same thing goes for state employees, but there is a twist. Their e-mails are actually considered public record. Finally, the U.S. Court of Appeals also just ruled e-mail providers can monitor incoming messages, so what you write is not necessarily for your eyes and the recipient's eyes only.