E-Mail privacy in jeopardy?

[Tornado]

From what I've read, it seems that the government is trying to establish a precedent that states that E-mail is inherently non-private, due to the fact that to sign up for an e-mail service you have to agree to a terms of service that states that the ISP can look through your e-mail:

Because a customer acknowledges that Yahoo! has unlimited access to her e-mail, and because she consents to Yahoo! disclosing her e-mail in response to legal process, compelled disclosure of e-mail from a Yahoo! account does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

This means that you are sharing your privacy with a large company, and thus waiving your privacy rights, which would allow the government to walk into the ISP building, grab your documents and walk out all without a warrant.
This part is especially scary:

But then the government goes on: they note "some e-mail accounts are abandoned, as when an account holder stops paying for the service and the account is cancelled." There "can be no reasonable expectation of privacy in such accounts."

So, when I cancel my subscription to, say, USA Datanet, I forfeit all of the private conversations that I held over E-mail while using the service to the government automatically?

Linky.

So am I reading into this wrong, or is this as ridiculous as it sounds?

 

[Sakiale]

I'm gonna go pretend to make a terrorist plot with my friend against the Golden Gate bridge.

 

[TopHat]

Don't mess with football, etc.

 

[Sakiale]

Football? ...

 

[Danoff]

If you're worried about it, use PGP encryption.

 

[niky]

Of course, this would actually matter if I thought my e-mail, which is protected by a silly 11-character password that some bot could probably guess in all of an hour, was actually secure and private.

If you feel that badly about it, you can just D/L your e-mail and erase your letterboxes on your account... or encrypt... but almost any encryption you can buy can be defeated, anyway.

 

[Omnis]

"They" can already surreptitiously access all of your E-mail/Online activity if they please.

The FBI is serious business. Once they have a search warrant, your private whatevers are toast.

 

[Kylehnat]

E-mail is, and always has been, the least private form of communication. When you send an e-mail, you're sending a written account through several different servers, any one of which can be used to recreate the message for whomever wants it.

 

[Mark T]

I've never considered E-mail to be a private form of communication.

 

[superberkut]

At least they look less through letters. But yes, that is a haunting thought. Yes, that means they can look through e-mails.