Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast, your source for policy rants and raves from Tech Freedom,

your Washington, D.C. advocate for the freedom to tinker and innovate. I'm Evan Schwarzen

Schwarzenstraver, your host. On today's show, email privacy. Just how private are your emails

and other electronic communications? The answer might surprise you. Joining me in our DC studio to discuss this is

Chris Calabrese, Vice President for Policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that champions online civil liberties and human rights.

He is also the leader of the Digital Due Process Coalition, which is dedicated to reforming

email privacy.

Chris, thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

So, Chris, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution says, law enforcement

can't read your emails without a warrant. So why are we even having this

conversation? Well, you know, it's funny. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution

obviously didn't contemplate email, but it is an incredibly forward-looking document that

understands that our papers and effects need to be

protected from the government.

So you would think that would be the beginning and the end of the discussion.

Unfortunately, a quirk in the way that we deliver emails today means that the constitutional

status of our emails is actually very uncertain.

And so what I mean by that is when we get emails, we usually get through Google or

Yahoo or another service. And those third parties actually store your email on their own computers.

So if the email was on your computer, ironically, there would be no question that it was protected by the Fourth Amendment.

However, because it's stored on Google's computers, there are some that argue in the government

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