Fourth Amendment

Federal court ruled this week that police should obtain a warrant before accessing emails stored by internet service providers. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected prosecutors' arguments that there was no reasonable expectation that email is private when it's stored for more than 180 days. Such reasoning is antiquated today, when email conveys people's most guarded personal and business secrets and often lives on servers for years. As such, email should enjoy protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, the judges said.

Cellphone data captured from towers is protected under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution and accessing such information without proper sanction is deemed as illegal. Such a ruling was brought by a federal judge who broke the long line of similar cases when police wasn’t required to obtain search warrants based on probable cause before accessing the subscriber information.

According to the ruling brought by the US Supreme Court employers have the right to check text messages, including personal ones, sent by workers if they have reason to believe that workplace rules are being violated.