Court Protects Email from Secret Government Searches

Over the last 20 years, the government has routinely used the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) to secretly obtain stored email from email service providers without a warrant.  But a ruling yesterday found that the SCA violates the Fourth Amendment.

The government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers, according to a landmark ruling in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their telephone calls -- the first circuit court ever to make that finding. 

Read the decision in Warshak v. United States

Posted by Trisha Simonds