The fourth amendment doesn't protect you from other people reading your post. It probably _does_ protect you from the government reading your post (though, appa

The fourth amendment doesn't protect you from other people reading your post. It probably _does_ protect you from the government reading your post (though, apparently not protect you from the NSA logging all your mail[1]). It is a crime for other people to read your mail, though that protection comes from the legislative branch, not the constitution. Specifically, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 83, § 1702 [2]. If you could convince a judge that § 1702 applied to e-mail, you might be able to ruin Google's day. It'd be a very different legal argument than the fourth amendment legal claim. Whatever comes from Microsoft's legal arguments about the 4th amendment won't have a bearing on this line of argument. I still think the best avenue for a conspiracy theory motive for Microsoft is to get a ruling that says "if the e-mail provider examines the communication for any purposes other than facilitating mail delivery, then the communication loses its 4A protections." That would allow other competitors to advertise strong 4A protections, and force Google to choose between that sweet, sweet personal data or also advertising 4A protections. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mai... [2] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1702 http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1702