4th amendment and email

Think of email as just a little less secure than a postcard in the mail.

Then you'll be fine.

Although I am not a constitutional attorney I did do law enforcement for a few years. Classes on the 4th amendment were necessary so LE knows what they can and cannot do. Done with the resume now to info.

First I would like to point out that Tom made it seam like you only had 4th ammendment rights in your home. I realize the original slash dot article (which was a quote of another article) made it seem that way. This is not true, enough said.

Turns out the original poster has a new post changing the story.
http://volokh.com/2009/10/29/opinion-on-fourth-amendment-and-e-mail/

Here is a quote from the above blog post.
"In the course of re-reading the opinion to post it, I recognized that I was misreading a key part of the opinion. As I read it now, Judge Mosman does not conclude that e-mails are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Rather, he assumes for the sake of argument that the e-mails are protected (see bottom of page 12), but then concludes that the third party context negates an argument for Fourth Amendment notice to the subscribers. I missed this because the reasoning closely resembles the argument for saying that the Fourth Amendment doesn?t apply at all, and I didn?t read the earlier section closely enough. That?s obviously a much narrower position, and I apologize for misunderstanding it the first time in the quick skim I gave it. Sorry about that: The fault is entirely mine."

hmmm..."effects"...

Yeah, I would think that electronic form of paper would include e-mail, however perhaps you never intended e-mail to exist on paper as a primary source or at all. Still, I would thing a lot of things falls under "effects" - letters, notes, etc. I do wonder what if intellectual property falls under effects...

--S