The SCOTUS privacy ruling is accelerating lawmakers’ push for e-mail protections

Privacy-minded lawmakers are already capitalizing on an opening created by the Supreme Court when it unanimously ruled that police must have a warrant to search your cell phone.

Members of Congress who back stronger protections for e-mail and other electronic communications have begun citing the Court's landmark privacy endorsement, in an attempt to add momentum to their own privacy legislation.

The push to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a decades-old law that allows cops to read your e-mails if they've lain dormant for more than 180 days, has the support of the Justice Department and 220 cosponsors of a House bill known as the Email Privacy Act. The proposal would force police to get a warrant if they want to look at a suspect's e-mail. Today, that type of inspection requires little more than a subpoena.

"Even the Supreme Court of the United States, with an average age of 67, has moved ahead of Congress on technology issues," Rep Jared Polis (D-CO), one of the cosponsors, told the Washington Post. "The Court has put new wind in the sails of EPCA reform. This same standard [Fourth Amendment protections for cell phone contents] should apply to electronic communications."