The past 12 months have seen an unprecedented shift in the law as it pertains to electronic communications. What makes this recent evolution particularly dramatic are the scope of the shift, the fact that the shift has affected multiple levels of e-communications and that each level of the evolution has headed in the same direction—toward increasing the restrictions that prevent law enforcement from gaining evidence from e-communications.
The irony is that at the very start of this 12 month period, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be warning the entire legal system against precisely this course of conduct in City of Ontario v. Quon,1 when it stated:
The Court must proceed with care when considering the whole concept of privacy expectations in communications made on electronic equipment. …Rapid changes in the dynamics of communication and information transmission are evident not just in the technology itself but in what society accepts as proper behavior.
