[conspire] email retention [was Re: VPN]

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Tony Godshall (togo at of.net):

> "The Supreme Court has ruled that a warrant is required to search the
> contents of computers, cell phones, and other devices. Cloud storage
> remains a subject of contention, with different courts reaching different
> conclusions."
> https://www.justia.com/criminal/procedure/warrant-requirement/

I remember following that caselaw.  But I'm not following what/any
relevance that has to retention policies.

It's possible you or someone else in this discussion is thinking of the
earlier, basic caselaw, to which the above caselaw is an
exception/limitation, establishing that many electronic information in
business can be searched _without_ a court order, on account of low
expectation of privacy, which is why police can get, for example, a "pen
register" device aka a "trap and trace" device, installed on a business
telephone line to records the numbers called on a telephone by
monitoring electrical impulses -- based only on a court order, not a
warrant (which would require establishing probable cause).  

The expectation of privacy imputed to the _contents_ of telephone calls,
and to the contents of computers, ell phones, and other such devices, is 
quite a bit higher.  "Cloud"-stored data is less-settled law mostly
because it's newer.

But anyway, near as I can tell, this has fsck-all to do with any legal
criteria related to data-retention policies and N-day cutoffs.