That's not an uncommon question. The argument may be easy to buy into. Stored email is afforded little protection under the Stored Communications Act (SCA). Given those weak protections, why bother with the complexities of interception when they can simply be requested from the provider?

The answer is simple. Savvy users of email will limit their exposure to subpoenas for stored email. How? Control of mail servers is the most likely. Media conversion of email on delivery is another. International mail servers is yet another. There are others. What's more, the government always limit its access to a single type of network traffic. If agents are already sniffing for instant message traffic, there's no reason to expect they won't also go ahead and collect emal information. The end result is that the government, in spite of the ease of collecting email under the SCA, will still have motivation and opportunity to intercept email.

If the government is going to intrude on Americans' privacy protections online by intercepting Internet communications, assessing the protections of intercepted email remains important.