Feds to Congress: don't saddle 4th amendment on us

The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation 

that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.

As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protections. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.