Petraeus Case Illustrates FBI Authority To Read Email

An anonymous reader writes "Back in April, we discussed how the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act says email that has resided on a server for more than six months can be considered abandoned. The recent investigation of General Petraeus brings this issue to light again, and perhaps to a broader audience. Under current U.S. law, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor — not a judge — to obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older. Do you know anyone these days who doesn't have IMAP accounts with 6+-month-old mail on them?"

Comments

Re:I have a bigger problem with this story . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Next they will go after people who masturbate and lie about that.

I spoke with someone who interviewed with CIA, one of the questions they asked was "what do you think about when you masturbate?"