Can you expect privacy in e-mails?

Kenneth Belva posted a plea on his blog the other day. 

Kenneth says:

"I always assumed that blogging is public and that any email correspondence between bloggers should be kept private"

 I fully agree with Kenneth. But out of my more than decade of internet experience, I know first hand that ANY communication you share with anyone on the 'net might be published against your will. Even if you add the Lawyers Confidentiality note. 

The reason is that it is so easy. Cut'n'paste is a very common way to reuse information today. Add e-mail forwarding, replying with history, or accidentally sending to a thirdparty. All these techniques are available to anyone - permission or not. Accidentally or on purpose.

Based on the above, we might conclude that Kenneth should know better. But I will not do that. I argue that Kenneth should be able to trust the other person(s) of the e-mail communication. Especially since the party in speech is a fellow security blogger. 

As (information security) bloggers are only people, I guess we just have to expect the type of behavior Kenneth describes:

"This is not normally my modus operandi because I usually assume that most respect email privacy. It’s a good thing I asked because the reply was that if I wanted confidentiality, I should have asked for it before the exchange!  "

Kenneth, I agree with you. We should assume e-mail communication to be kept private.

I do not think we can expect it. We can ask for it, and hope the other party is respecting our wishes. But we can never take it for granted.