Do police need a warrant to read your email?

Do the police need a warrant to read your email? Believe it or not, two decades into the Internet age, the answer to that question is still "maybe." It depends on how old the email is, where you keep it — and it even depends on whom you ask.

A warrant means police have to show probable cause — it's a higher level of oversight, the kind of court order that cops need before they come into your home and, say, rummage through your desk.

The thing is, search warrants take more time and effort, so police sometimes point to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986; it says they don't need a warrant for older emails. Salgado admits that's true — and it's a problem.

"I think that your average user would be very surprised to hear the federal privacy statute that governs cloud computing would allow the disclosure of their emails with nothing more than an administrative subpoena," he says.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/24/142755551/how-private-is-your-email-it-depends