Police only need an administrative subpoena, issued without a judge's approval, to read emails that have been opened or that are more than 180 days old. Police simply swear an email is relevant to an investigation, and then obtain a subpoena to force an Internet company to turn it over.

By this standard, emailed bank statements, health records and other supposedly confidential information is much more vulnerable than the same information sent through the postal service.

The amended law, written by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D.-Vt., requires a search warrant based on probable cause to access a citizen's private email. Leahy, an early adopter of a sort, also wrote the original 1986 act, which dates to almost a decade before the World Wide Web.

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