Sec. 206. Restrictions on collecting, processing, maintaining, and disclosing contents of communications
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A covered entity may not collect, process, maintain, or disclose the contents of any communication, regardless of whether the sender or intended recipient of the communication is an individual, other person, or an electronic device, for any purpose other than— transmitting or displaying the communication to any intended recipient or the original sender, or maintaining such communications for such purposes; detecting, responding to, or preventing security incidents or threats; providing services to assist in the drafting or creation of the content of a communication; processing expressly requested by the sender or intended recipient, if the sender or intended recipient can terminate such processing using a reasonable mechanism; disclosing otherwise required by law; filtering a communication where the primary purpose of the communication is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service of a covered entity; or detecting or enforcing an abuse or violation of the terms of service of the covered entity that would result in either a temporary or permanent ban from using the service.
A covered entity is not considered an intended recipient of a communication, or any communication used in the creation of the content of said communication, where— at least one intended recipient is a natural person other than an employee or contractor of the covered entity; at least one intended recipient is a person other than the covered entity; or a purpose of the covered entity’s service is to maintain, at the direction of the sender, the content of said communication for more than a transitory period.
The sender of a communication is the person for whom the communication, and its content, is disclosed at the direction of and on behalf of. Where the sender is a natural person, they shall be the sender of the entire content of the communication, regardless of the original author of any portion of the content. Otherwise, a sender shall be the sender of only the content it was an original author of, or content it received as an intended recipient. Subsection
(a)shall not apply where the contents of communication are made publicly accessible by the sender without restrictions on accessibility other than the general authorization to access the services used to make the information accessible. A covered entity shall not— prohibit or prevent a person from encrypting or otherwise rendering unintelligible the content of a communication using a means that prevents the covered entity from being able to decrypt or otherwise render intelligible said content; and require or cause a person to disclose or circumvent the means described in paragraph
(1)to the covered entity that would allow it to render the content intelligible. A service provider shall not be held liable for a violation of this section if such service provider is acting at the direction of and on behalf of a covered entity and has a reasonable belief that the covered entity’s directions are in compliance with this section.