I SOMEHOW MISSED THIS THE OTHER DAY: Court Rules Email Protected by Fourth Amendment. “Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the contents of the messages in an email inbox hosted on a provider’s servers are protected by the Fourth Amendment, even though the messages are accessible to an email provider. As the court puts it, ‘[t]he government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber’s emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause.’ This is a very big deal; it marks the first time a federal court of appeals has extended the Fourth Amendment to email with such care and detail.”