Houston Chronicle: “Email not in the Fourth Amendment”

Houston Chronicle: Email not in the Fourth Amendment | Outdated privacy regulations let law enforcement spy via Internet companies and social networks by Caleb Garling:

Outdated digital privacy regulations are increasingly allowing law enforcement agencies to use Internet companies and popular social networks to do their spying.

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure of private citizens and their “persons, houses, papers, and effects” – but obviously makes no mention of email in a remote server. In 1986, Congress passed a law regulating how law enforcement can access information stored and communicated electronically. That was years before the Internet became a household term and before email was commonplace.

The law, known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, updated the 1968 Federal Wiretap Act. Now, as the Senate considers amending the privacy act to make law enforcement more accountable to the courts, Internet providers and service companies find themselves as awkward middlemen between the government and Web users.

How is email not an “effect”? It is, but there are too many other Fourth Amendment problems lurking.