snail mail = email? According to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals...Yes.

July 2007 Entry 4

On June 18th the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio at Cincinnati. If you like reading legal decisions, here is a pdf. This decision is important because it overturns 20 year old government practices regarding email. To someone interested in such things, it's an interesting read. But since most of us aren't fascinated by legalese, here is the short version:

Until June 18th of this year the government was able to demand your archived emails from your ISP without telling you until after the emails had already been turned over. After June 18th email is accorded the same protections as phone calls and 'snail mail' based on the concept of "reasonable expectation of privacy." Reasonable expectation of privacy means that a normal person would expect their email to be read only by the people they sent it to. So personal email has "reasonable expectation of privacy," but in many cases work email doesn't. In fact, if you access your personal email at work you may lose the right consider it private. That is because many companies have policies stating that they may (or will) monitor all outgoing communications. If your employer is one of those companies, any email you send from there, even if it is your personal account, is assumed to be read by the company, making it public information. But as long as you keep your personal email at home, the feds can still demand and monitor, but now they have to either subpoena them, or get a search warrant to do it. Very good, if they obey.

I say "if they obey" because the Steven Warshak suit was brought because the government failed to follow the requirements of the law they used to gain access the email of Steven Warshak. They sought and were granted an order to obtain Mr. Warshaks records, including email, from his ISP. They requested a 90 day "delay of notification" as allowed by statute. It was a sealed order, so no one would see it until it was unsealed. One year later, a day after the judge unsealed the order a notification was sent to Steven Warshak. Though they had the right to request extensions on the 90 day "delay of notification" they never did. If the feds aren't going to obey a 20+ year old law, why will they change their habits just because they've been told their interpretation of the law is wrong?

These are the reasons we have to be on our toes and be vocal about our rights. Once a right falls, it is almost impossible to restore. Once a freedom is lost, it may take revolution to get it back. And government agencies by their nature, abhor freedom and privacy. The more freedom and privacy citizens have, the less power and control the government has. Our forefathers did a good job of balancing the two, but they could not have foreseen the incredible technologies we have, and the ways that privacies and freedoms can be infringed and outright stolen - without our even knowing we've been harmed until long after the fact. It's our job and duty to look out for our rights, because, trite as it sounds, no one else will.