In a landmark decision issued on June 18, the Sixth Circuit held that e-mail users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their e-mail communications, and thus, e-mails have the same Fourth Amendment constitutional privacy protections as telephone conversations and sealed "regular" mail. As a result, at least in that Circuit, the government is not entitled to search and seize e-mail communications directly from an Internet Service Provider ("ISP") related to an account holder’s e-mails without obtaining a warrant based on probable cause or providing prior notice to that e-mail account holder. As discussed below, the Court recognized an exception to this ruling that may become important for employers and others to review, which involves an analysis of the right to access an employee’s e-mails.

In Warshak v....

To access this article please LOGIN HERE. A link have been followed from a RSS Feed of our content. However, our site could not verify your user creditials from reading our cookie. There are many reasons for why our cookie has been dropped, from changing browser or you logged off from the site on your last visit. If you've forgotten your login details click here and we'll remind you by sending your details to your email address. If you have followed this link from another source and you have not registered please follow this link to our registeration form. This service is completely FREE but for the full article and thousands of other articles from 100+ countries please tell us about yourself by registering (and yes, our lawyers like to think you've read our Disclaimer). It only takes 30 seconds and as well as great content you get articles more relevant to you and other advanced features like an optional personalised once-weekly news alert and forward-to-colleague capabilities.

Specific Questions relating to this article should be addressed directly to the author.

Do you have a question for the author?