11th Circuit, 4th Amendment, Email (Political,Nonpartisan)

And to save everyone the ad-hominem right off the top...I'm Canadian, I don't have a dog in this race, I'm a horrible jerk who nobody should listen to, etc......Now that thats out of the way...the 11th Circuit handed down a blow today to (y)our personal privacy and rights against unreasonable search by deciding that "constitutional protection in stored copies of e-mail held by third parties disappears as soon as any copy of the communication is delivered".What that means to you...is that whenever you send an email,stop smoking, the instant that said email is delivered to the adress-ee, the US Government has full right to go to your ISP and print off copies of your emails.I even know where the 11th Circuit is coming from. In Postal Mail in the USA, whether USPS or a 3rd party company, mail enjoys 4th Amendment protection throughout the chain...4th Amendment rights hold with the sender until the mail is deposited in a mailbox, with the sender, recipient, and "delivery company" in-transit, and with the recipient once delivered. It seems to me that the 11th Circuit took this precident to mean that once the mail is delivered, the parties that transported the mail no longer have 4th Amendment protection...just the recipient.The problem of course is, in regular mail, there are no "copies" that exist. The mail is the mail, and once delivered UPS doesn't have 4th Amendment rights to a piece of mail because they no longer have posession of said piece of mail. In email...well, what ends up in your mailbox on your computer is merely a copy of a copy of a copy...nothing physical ever changes hands. So the 11th Circuit interpeted this to mean that the copies of email, once delivered, are fair game to be seized by the government.Now, I know the standard argument is the "Well, if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about". Well, I'm sorry, but thats a steaming pile of horse crap, regardless of the fact that it is, in essence, a true statement. The problem is, bottom line, that they're eroding (y)our rights again in the name of security. You/we no longer enjoy any security in thought when we use email as the medium - and that in my opinion is wrong. THe poor founding fathers would be spinning in their graves if they knew the butchery of freedom going on right now in the name of security.Honestly, I feel sorry for you guys stateside right now...between the government stealing your rights every chance they get, and too many people not caring about it, you're in the beginning phases of actually having a problem...rights given away are rarely returned. I wish I had an idea to help though...I have no idea what has to be done to fix this...the politicians on both sides of the isle sure as hell aren't interested.Sammy