Fourth Amendment Protection from Government Intrusion of E-mail and Internet Communications   Tags: constitutional_law, privacy_law, technology_law  

This website provides a research guide for the analysis of Fourth Amendment protection from governmental intrusion on personal e-mail and Internet communications.  The scope of this research guide is limited to protection of the Fourth Amendment provides as to acts of government agencies and law enforcement officials in obtaining e-mail and Internet communication data, either through real-time interception or retrieval from electronic storage.  This research guide does not provide a detailed history of the evolution or application of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, nor does it deal with the establishment or violation of rights to privacy from the intrusion by non-governmental agencies such as employers or other private citizens.

As you will find below, there are no authoritative or landmark cases that pass on the reasonable expectation of privacy a person has in their Internet communication.  Most analysis of the Fourth Amendment protection in cases and legal articles or publications analogize the nature of an e-mail or web communication to several categories of traditional forms of communication on which the court has already ruled or for which the statutory provisions specifically allow. This often involves whether the communication was intercepted in real-time, which the courts regard like a traditional telephone conversation, or extracted from "electronic storage", which is considered more like personal papers and effects. The level of protection afforded also depends on whether the storage is short term, which the courts have analogized to a safety deposit box, or long term which has been treated like filed business papers.

The amount of information intercepted from an e-mail or Internet communication also plays a major part in the determination of the Fourth Amendment protection, where the courts have found an expectation of privacy in the “content” of a communication, but not in the “dialing, routing, addressing, and signaling” information that accompanies the communication. Thus interception of this adjunct routing information does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment at all.

This treatment of the Fourth Amendment application to e-mail and Internet communications does not provide an easy method for determining the level of protection to be afforded a particular intercepted e-mail or Internet communication by the courts. While this research guide does not assume to suggest the proper answer to this question, it does seek to expose the reader to the many facets of analysis required to argue the issue from either side.

William R. King is a second-year law student at Georgia State University College of Law and Moot Court board member.  William's interests lie in technology related law, including Intellectual Property, e-Commerce, and Internet privacy issues.

Bibliographies on this Web site were prepared for educational purposes by law students as part of Nancy P. Johnson's Advanced Legal Research course. The Law Library does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information provided. Thorough legal research requires a researcher to update materials from date of publication; please note the semester and year the bibliography was prepared.