9th Circuit says the Electronic Communication Privacy Act applies even to non-citizen email on US servers

Philip Favro at the blog  e-discovery 2.0 wrote a post yesterday about a recent 9th Circuit ruling that applies the protections of the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA) to email belonging to both citizens of the United States ad non-citizens alike. They make the determinative question whether or not the server on which the email is stored is located in the United States. If the server is in the US, the ECPA applies to all the email on it.

I have no knowledge of international law, but I'd love to know whether this fits with or contradicts any treaty law. It seems like this ruling may lead some non-citizens to open email accounts with US-based servers, ensuring that their email will be protected by the ECPA in the event that they're dragged into litigation. Now we wait and see if other circuits agree, or a circuit split sets the issue up for some Supreme Court floor time in the future.

Source: e-discovery 2.0 

This was originally posted to joeross.posterous.com.