State v. Townsend, 57 P.3d 255 (Wash. 2002) (Bridge, J. concurring).
The principal issue the court resolved was whether a police officer violated a provision in Washington's privacy act when he saved and printed e-mail and real time client-to-client ICQ messages between the defendant and a fictitious child. The court upheld the conviction and held that the act was not violated. In a concurring opinion, one judge further addressed the unique aspects of electronically created and stored e-mail. "Technically, e-mail messages are permanently recorded since 'most e-mail programs keep copies of every message a user ever wrote, every message the user ever received, and every message the user deleted.' ...Although some e-mail services may offer the possibility of 'shredding' an e-mail message, arguably the equivalent of actually deleting it, the e-mail file may still be retrievable using certain software. 'A deleted file is really not a deleted file, it is merely organized differently.' "