Email is not actually private?

A federal case against a spam king has taken an interesting twist. During the investigation, the government applied for and received a court order to access the spammer's email accounts. A court order is similar to a search warrant, but it requires a lower burden of proof than a warrant. The federal government argued that it doesn't need a search warrant since emails are held on a third party server and therefore are more accessible under the Stored Communications Act. The spam king has now challenged this move, arguing that email is private and should be as such by law.

Since most people view email as private communications akin to letters (which would require a search warrant), it will be interesting to see how the case unfolds. For now, maybe I should switch on POP3 settings in my Gmail account...