[JKCalhoun]

While I agree, law enforcement in the U.S. is supposedly bound by the "expectation of privacy" where, I think we can all agree, we ought to have an expectation of privacy when we send an email directly to one of our contacts.

Of course Google and Gmail (as an obvious example) are not law enforcement so they can specify the terms of privacy when you sign up, scan your email if they wish, etc.

[Terretta]

Regular mail to a contact has circumstances where it can be searched:

The expectation that personal correspondence should remain private is centuries old. In the 1750s, for example, Postmaster Benjamin Franklin instituted a policy forbidding postmasters from reading individuals’ letters.

So it is dismaying that the Postal Service, the Inspection Service and the DOJ are not upfront with the public as to when they feel fit to open private mail.

https://www.rstreet.org/2014/11/19/yes-the-government-can-op...

Electronic mail does not enjoy enhanced protections over regular mail. Arguably, as electronic mail is sent through a chain of third parties without an envelope, the expectation of privacy is less.

Email is like postcards: “privacy” depends on being one in a sea of items, and a postal worker averting their eyes.

[Retric]

Interesting, I don’t have an expectation of privacy when it comes to unencrypted emails. Likely due to them being regularly scanned and archived at work etc.

[xunn0026]

> I think we can all agree, we ought to have an expectation of privacy when we send an email directly to one of our contacts.

We ought.

But in my country I once received a piece of physical mail from a more important institution in a more special (but not shady) country and the mail literally arrived open. I realised this is how people under communist regimes must have felt.

[Terretta]

In the U.S., “the Fourth Amendment permits the warrantless searching of mail entering or leaving the United States…. Congress specifically has authorized the warrantless search of mail at the border, although some of those provisions place restrictions on the reading of correspondence. See, e.g., 19 U.S.C. § 1583(a)(l) (permitting warrantless search of mail of domestic origin transmitted for export … and foreign mail transiting the United States”)…”