The law, called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, has some seemingly odd provisions, including one that, according to Wired, allows authorities to access e-mail that's more than 6 months old without a warrant from a judge. All that's needed is a subpoena, which is easier to obtain.
"It's not yet clear on precisely what legal authority the FBI obtained access to Broadwell's e-mail," The New Yorker says, "but under the relevant federal statute, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the government need do little more than ask."
Tech companies want to make it harder for law enforcement to read your e-mail: As Heather Kelly reports for CNN, the tech companies that control most of the digital info stored by Americans these days actually want that law to change. "Google is an active member of the Digital Due Process Coalition, which has been pushing for reform of the ECPA," she writes. "The group's members include Apple, Amazon, the ACLU, Facebook, Google and Twitter along with a slew of other big-name tech companies and civil liberties groups."
The U.S. Justice Department opposes reform on the grounds it would make it more difficult for investigators to obtain e-mail communications.
Still, search engines may pose the biggest privacy threat: It's worth noting that when you send an e-mail or post something on Facebook, you usually expect someone else to see it, although maybe not everyone, and probably not the FBI. As John Herrman writes for BuzzFeed, however, search engines such as Google are the ones that know your "real secrets" since it doesn't feel like anyone else would see what you're searching for.
But, because of search, Google "knows the things you wouldn't ask your friends. It knows things you can't ask your spouse. It knows the things you haven't asked your doctor yet. It knows things that you can't ask anyone else and that might not have been asked at all before Google existed," he writes. "Google's servers are a repository of the developed world's darkest and most heartbreaking secrets, a vast closet lined with millions of digital skeletons that, should they escape, would spare nobody."
The search engine does anonymize data over time. "We strike a reasonable balance between the competing pressures we face, such as the privacy of our users, the security of our systems and the need for innovation. We believe anonymizing IP addresses after 9 months and cookies in our search engine logs after 18 months strikes the right balance," Google says on an FAQ page about privacy.