Electronic Mail

From Rose Mary Woods' tape recordings in the Nixon White House to Karl Rove's e-mails during the Bush administration, congressional investigators and political historians are forever seeking records of White House communications, often against the wishes of the sitting president.

It happened with cigarettes. It happened with red meat. And carbs. And SUVs. And now it's happening with e-mail. The preferred communication channel of millions of Americans is no longer cool. According to a growing number of academics, "technologists" and psychologists, our dependence on e-mail -- the need to attend to a constantly beeping in-box -- is creating anxiety in the workplace, adversely affecting the ability to focus, diminishing productivity and threatening family bonds.

The woman behind the infamous e-mail that aired criticisms of Sarah Palin to millions across the cyber-globe sat at a computer screen scrolling through unread messages, as dozens more popped into her inbox. "Let's see, what is the next one?" Anne Kilkenny said with a smile, killing time before her family attended a Saturday evening church service. She clicked and skimmed the words: "Hateful liar." She opened the next one: "I think you are nothing more than disgruntled and jealous in some way!!

Gov. Sarah Palin maintained a private e-mail account that she used to communicate with a small circle of staff members outside the state government's secure official e-mail system, according to the Wasilla company that established the site. The account was separate from the Yahoo e-mail address that was abruptly abandoned by the McCain campaign on Sept. 17, the day hackers penetrated the account and posted pages from it on the Internet.

Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates' 2004 proclamation that the spam problem would be solved within two years has proved a bitter joke, with unsolicited messages doubling yearly to make up about 90% of mail transmitted on the Internet. But this week, the tide turned. The number of unwanted, offensive and misleading e-mails sent across the globe plummeted by about two-thirds, to a mere 60 billion or so a day by Thursday, according to spam filtering companies.

When new members were welcomed to an e-mail group called the Easy Rider Gag List, they were warned that they would soon be receiving a steady diet of tasteless humor. The warning came from the Easy Rider himself: Alex Kozinski, one of the highest ranking and most intellectually respected federal judges. On the gag list, Kozinski periodically distributed jokes to a group of friends and associates, including his law clerks, colleagues on the federal bench, prominent attorneys and journalists.

A volunteer coach for youth basketball teams in San Bernardino County was arrested Friday on suspicion of sending sexually explicit messages online to an Anaheim police officer posing as a 14-year-old girl, authorities said Gregory Albert Carroll, 45, was arrested at his Ontario residence and booked into Anaheim's detention facility on suspicion of distributing lewd materials to a minor, attempting lewd acts with a minor and luring a minor for sex acts. Bail was set at $100,000.

Intel Corp.'s loss of e-mail records in an antitrust case filed by rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. must be investigated by the court, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Intel told U.S. District Judge Joseph J. Farnan Jr. in a letter Monday that "some document-retention lapses" had occurred because of "inadvertent mistakes" in its litigation-related e-mail preservation procedures. "It appears on the surface to be a human lapse," the judge said at a hearing in Wilmington, Del.

Last September, Internet spam messages touting the stock of Covina-based Healtheuniverse Inc. started landing in e-mail in-boxes across the country. The "hot biopharmaceutical stock," the messages promised, was "getting ready to explode!!!" It did -- for two days. Amid a surge in trading volume, the share price nearly doubled, to 22 cents, before declining steadily over the following week and eventually falling below its pre-spam price.

Intel Corp. Chairman Craig R. Barrett and Chief Executive Paul S. Otellini may have lost e-mail relevant to antitrust claims brought by rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., a lawyer for AMD told a court official. The Intel officers apparently were unaware that procedures weren't in place to preserve the correspondence, the lawyer told Vincent J. Poppiti, a special master appointed to investigate the missing e-mail.