In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, affectionately known by today’s privacy lawyers as ECPA. At the time, no one knew whether the Fourth Amendment would protect something like electronic mail, but Republicans and Democrats alike wanted to create this type of statutory protection. As sometimes happens in Washington, DC, in 1986 Congress acted with good intentions but in a way that was far from simple. Part of ECPA was the Stored Communications Act, which created what was basically a new form of search warrant. With probable cause, the government
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