[Discuss] Data including email, stored in the cloud, may be available to law enforcement without search warrant

[scottmarydavidsam at gmail.com]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/ecpa-turns-twenty-five/

Paraphrasing the article:

According to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the law still
considers data that has been left on cloud servers for longer than six
months to be "abandoned.".

Law enforcement officers will continue to have access to citizens' stored
communications that are more than six months old without a warrant as long
as they assert that the content is relevant to a criminal investigation.
The law also allows law enforcement to access all files stored in the cloud
for longer than six months without a warrant, even though cloud storage
services, like Dropbox, did not exist in 1986.

A federal appeals court last year ruled that email stored in the cloud for
longer than six months still requires a warrant for access, but the ruling
applies only to Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.