November 27, 2006 statement: “Last week, CDT and the ACLU joined a friend-of-the-court brief written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, urging a federal appeals court to extend to e-mail the same constitutional protection accorded to telephone calls and regular mail. Remarkably, the constitutional status of e-mail has never been decided, and the Justice Department claims that opened e-mail and older stored e-mail can be obtained from service providers without a court order and without notice to the e-mail user. In the case, Warshak v. U.S., a lower federal court ruled that government agents could not force disclosure of email from a service provider unless they provided the relevant subscriber notice and an opportunity to object.”