Comment by michaelt

> No, unless you're arguing that the government should be barred from even making voluntary requests at all?

IMHO the third-party doctrine is an area where legislators ought to be passing laws to broaden constitutional protections, in suitably nuanced way, to keep up with the times. In the modern age, people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.

The idea that fourth amendment protections apply to physical mail, but not to e-mail [1] doesn't really make much sense.

Unfortunately this is the sort of thing change that really needs to come from legislators, and the legislative process isn't very effective at the moment.

[1] except for the 0.1% of people who self-host their own e-mail server in their own home