§ 4548.Privileged communications; electronic communication thereof.

Privilege law developed around face-to-face conversations and sealed letters, and email threatened to complicate it: does a privileged message lose its protection because IT staff, email providers, or telecom carriers could in theory read it in transit? CPLR 4548 answers no. A communication that qualifies for privilege under Article 45 does not forfeit that privileged status for the sole reason that it traveled by electronic means.

The statute names the specific worry directly: the fact that people necessary to deliver or facilitate the electronic communication may have access to its content does not defeat the privilege. A system administrator who could technically read a privileged email while maintaining the server, or a service provider that routes a text message, does not create the kind of third-party disclosure that normally waives privilege.

This matters across every privilege the CPLR recognizes, attorney-client, physician-patient, clergy-penitent, and the rest, since modern practice runs almost entirely on electronic communication. Without this rule, litigants could argue that any privileged email or text was never truly confidential because of how digital infrastructure works. CPLR 4548 forecloses that argument outright.