The Privacy of Email

An Anonymous Coward writes "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. 'The Stored Communications Act is very important,' former federal prosecutor and counter-terrorism specialist Andrew McCarthy told United Press International. But the future of the law now hangs in the balance."

Comments

Re:Asinine

[quanticle]

By your arguement, nobody should expect privacy when talking on the phone since they didn't take steps to encrypt their phonecalls

Your analogy doesn't fit. When I make a phone call, I'm expecting a point-to-point connection, with no intermediaries to intercept or look at my communication. When I send an e-mail, I know that it will be stored and transferred across many server, and that those servers may have logging software that will store a copy of my e-mail.

However, with packet-switched phone networks replacing traditional circuit switching, that distinction is becoming more blurred.