A U.S. District Court has ruled that a person is not entitled to know if the government takes a look at your e-mail.

The opinion, available here, was written by Michael Mosman in a case involving probable cause for a search of an individual’s gmail e-mails in order to search for evidence of a crime. The federal government asked that the person whose e-mails were being searched had no right to kno his e-mails were being searched.

Be worried?

Not really. The federal government still have to have probable cause to get the warrant, but they don’t have to notify you.

Remember, the federal government can search items in a FedEx truck without notifying you–they do have to notify FedEx… Therefore, your ISP or mail provider will get a notice about the federal government searching your e-mail.

The 4th Amendment applies, but it applies to the Service Provider and not to the user who sent/received the e-mail message.

The Judge, in an article on Yahoo News, states

“If a suspect leaves private documents at his mother’s house and the police obtain a warrant to search his mother’s house, they need only provide a copy of the warrant and a receipt to the mother, even though she is not the ‘owner’ of the documents,” he writes.

Whether you like it or not, that makes legal sense…