When Congress enacted the Stored Communications Act of 1986 (SCA), it claimed the statute would guarantee the privacy of digital data that service providers were retaining in storage. The act prohibited the providers from sharing the stored data, and it prohibited unauthorized access to the data, commonly called computer hacking -- except, of course, if the recipients or the hackers were working for the federal government. Just as it did with the Patriot Act of 2001 -- which permits one...
