Vereinigte Staaten v. Warshak

Das Berufungsgericht des sechsten Bezirks hat beschlossen, dass im Fall Case: 08-3997 Document: 006110815248 Filed: 12/14/2010 on December 14, 2010

The Court of Appeals for the Sixth District has ruled, in United States v.  Warshak et al  Case: 08-3997 Document: 006110815248 Filed: 12/14/2010 on December 14, 2010 that Government and law enforcement must obtain a search warrant with the applicable “probable cause” criteria satisfied in order to compel a commercial ISP or webmail provider to relinquish the e-mail of a subscriber,

In so doing, the Court ruled unconstitutional that portion of the Stored Communications Act of 1986, which permitted such demands. The Court held that this portion of the Act   was incompatible with the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure This is the first time that e-mail on a server has been judicially included under the Fourth Amendment umbrella

At the time of the enactment of the Stored Communications Act, e-mail was held on ISP servers for a relatively brief period of time and it was assumed that such data older than six months had been abandoned. Today’s reality is that e-mail is held on servers for indefinite periods of time.

The decision, which will certainly be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, will, in the meantime remain controlling in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee but persuasive in the rest of the Country