The New York Times recently published an article entitled “Google Says Electronic Snooping by Government Should Be More Difficult.” According to the article, “If a government wants to peek into your Web-based e-mail account, it is surprisingly easy, most of the time not even requiring a judge’s approval.” Click here to read the article.
This raises interesting Fourth Amendment issues. On the one hand, we expect that there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy to information we write, post, load on our own computer, but on the other hand are our words via the computer any different than words or thoughts we would send via snail mail?