JimCDT

I would say "Unlock your phone and give it to me, and while I'm scrolling through it, take off all your clothes."

The point is that those who have done nothing wrong have a lot to hide - it may be "innocent" in the sense that it is not illegal, but it is sensitive, intimate, embarrassing. With this technology, we intermingle the personal and the professional, the intimate and the trivial. In an investigation that runs out of control, all of that is scooped up.

True, but consider how quickly the investigation ballooned, sweeping in another general, as to whom there was zero suspected security risk, and even resulting in disclosures about the FBI agent who kicked off the investigation. And all that could happen without the approval or supervision of a judge. There is a solution, which is to amend the law to bring these investigations under the control of a judge, through the warrant requirement.

That is a broad question. I'll start with a broad answer and point to some resources. In the US, the Constitution, of course, is the bedrock source of your rights. While the Supreme Court has given a very strong interpretation to the 1st Amendment (free speech) as applied to the Internet, the courts have been slow in applying the 4th Amendment (protection against government searches) to the digital environment. That leaves the matter with Congress, and the main statute on the books, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is outdated, having been written in 1986. While the government needs a warrant from a judge to read your regular postal mail, and a warrant from a judge to listen to your phone calls, under ECPA it does not need a warrant to read much of your email, or your stored docs, calendar, photos - anything in the cloud. We're working to overcome that. See VanishingRights.

In terms of government access, European law and American law are not that different. Remember, the European Privacy Directive does not regulate governmental access for law enforcement or national security. That is left up to national law - and in most European countries, the local law is about the same as in the US, giving government very broad access to data. See this collection of articles for some comparative research that may be helpful.

I agree that you do have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your email and stored documents. The problem is, the courts have not yet caught up with that on a nationwide basis.

In terms of backbone, there is some good news on that point: Some major companies are telling the government "Come back with a warrant." EFF is doing a great job identifying Who Has Your Back.