"A U.S. appeals court in Ohio has ruled that e-mail messages stored on Internet servers are protected by the Constitution as are telephone conversations and that a federal law permitting warrantless secret searches of e-mail violates the Fourth Amendment."
"ISPs, the ruling states, have 'mere custody' over the e-mail and subpoenaing them 'is insufficient to trump the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement.'"
"[David Rivkin] said that, even given the expectation of privacy, the context of the effort to access the data -- whether it was part of a criminal case or an intelligence-gathering effort, for instance -- had to be considered."
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This of course assumes that the ISP is willing to resist and wait for a warrant. As we saw with phone records and search engines, most are all too willing to turn everthing over when asked.
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