<P> The ECPA extended government restrictions on wire taps from telephone calls to include transmissions of electronic data by computer (18 U.S.C. § 2510 et seq .), added new provisions prohibiting access to stored electronic communications, i.e., the Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq .), and added so - called pen / trap provisions that permit the tracing of telephone communications (18 U.S.C. § 3121 et seq .). </P> <P> 18 U.S.C. § 3123 (d) (2) provides for gag orders which direct the recipient of a pen register or trap and trace device order not to disclose the existence of the pen / trap or the investigation . </P> <P> The ECPA extended privacy protections provided by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (of employers monitoring of employees phone calls) to include also electronic and cell phone communications . See also Employee monitoring and Workplace privacy . </P> <P> Several court cases have raised the question of whether e-mail messages are protected under the stricter provisions of Title I while they were in transient storage en route to their final destination . In United States v. Councilman, a U.S. district court and a three - judge appeals panel ruled they were not, but in 2005, the full United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed this opinion . Privacy advocates were relieved; they had argued in amicus curiae briefs that if the ECPA did not protect e-mail in temporary storage, its added protections were meaningless as virtually all electronic mail is stored temporarily in transit at least once and that Congress would have known this in 1986 when the law was passed . (see, e.g., RFC 822). The case was eventually dismissed on grounds unrelated to ECPA issues . </P>

The electronic communications privacy act of 1986 is a federal statute that regulates email