I know this is an unpopular stance, but if you operate on any assumption other than that this happens all the time on myriad services you use, you’re a crazy unrealistic person lacking in the minimum amount of cynicism (read: realism) required to use the modern internet in a fully-informed manner.

While I don’t have time these days to do the digging someone should do on this, it strikes me as very likely we all gave Facebook permission to skim all of our content for ad-related and any other purposes when we signed up.

Digital privacy almost always comes with an asterisk these days, and that’s not going to change any time soon.

Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Ted Poe (R-Texas), and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) are pushing an amendment to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that would require a warrant for authorities to obtain any email, instead of allowing free access to messages older than six months.

I wrote in January about Google’s decision to require a warrant even where the law does not, so the ECPA’s shortcomings in the digital age (the law is more than twenty years old) are sometimes mitigated by responsible corporate policies.

But a legitimate amendment like Lofgren’s would apply Google’s common sense approach to 4th Amendment rights to all such service providers. There’s simply no excuse not to get this done.

David Kravets quotes a Googler:

“Google requires an ECPA search warrant for contents of Gmail and other services based on the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which prevents unreasonable search and seizure,” Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman, said.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act isn’t always as demanding as Google, and their assertion that the policy is based on Constitutional requirements implies that the ECPA does not comport with the same requirements. That’s a bold legal position to take, but as Mr. Kravets explains at Wired, Google isn’t necessarily alone.

Twenty-plus years is a long time, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is overdue for an update. A summary of the state of things:

Unfortunately these digital documents lack long-held privacy safeguards. Email saved in web-based email systems like Yahoo for longer than six months can be accessed with an administrative subpoena, which provides less protection than a warrant. Similarly, no matter what privacy setting you use, sensitive and personal information — photos, private journals, Facebook pages, corporate data, draft reports — shared with third parties like Google and Facebook can be accessible by police without a judge’s approval. All the government has to do is swear it’s “relevant” to an investigation.

Here’s to ensuring that the Fourth Amendment isn’t rendered moot by technological advancements.