Appeals Court Rules for E-Mail Privacy

CINCINNATI (AP) -- Federal investigators overstepped constitutional bounds by searching stored e-mails without a warrant in a fraud investigation, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

In a case closely watched by civil-liberties advocates in the still-emerging field of Internet privacy, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that e-mail users have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

"It goes without saying that like the telephone earlier in our history, e-mail is an ever-increasing mode of private communication, and protecting shared communications through this medium is as important to Fourth Amendment principles today as protecting telephone conversations has been in past," the appeals court said.

Although surveillance of in-transit e-mails is restricted under wiretapping laws, the government had contended that e-mails stored with service providers could be seized without warrants. Monday's ruling counters that position and comes at a time service providers are offering ever-increasing storage space.

"This landmark decision answered a question that had been dangerously open," said Kevin Bankston, attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group based in San Francisco.

The appeals court's unanimous ruling upholds a lower court ruling temporarily blocking investigators from additional e-mail searches without warrants. The panel said the government would have to either provide an account holder a chance to contest such a seizure or to prove that the holder had no expectation of privacy.

Details here from the AP via The Columbia Daily Tribune. The Court's opinion is here.