The Justice Department said Tuesday it supports rewriting the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the 1986 legislation that gives law enforcement the ability to read a citizen's emails without a warrant, if the email is older than six months old or is already opened. Elana Tyrangiel, acting assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy, testified to the House Judiciary subcommittee today, saying, "There is no principled basis to treat email less than 180 days old differently than email more than 180 days old."

Marketers whose list includes staffers of the Manhattan Beach, CA city may want to hold off on sending messaging today. The organization reported that its email is down because of an inoperative circuit. The city reported on its website that any email that goes to an @citymb.info domain is not getting through. The city's Internet Service Provider is working to resolve the problem.

As bloggers bemoan the death of Google Reader, WebProNews argues that email may be the answer to the loss of RSS. Unlike the different social media channels where not everyone has a profile, WebProNews reporter Chris Crum asserts, almost all Internet users use email. He thinks that email alerts and email newsletters may be the alternative for Internet users looking for news feeds.

Google's legal director Richard Salgado will testify at a House of Representatives hearing on reforming email privacy laws which is taking place today. During the hearing, lawmakjers will examine the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and determine if the rules need to be updated. Salgado shared his position on the Google blog, where he argued that times have changed and the law fails to protect "privacy expectations of Americans today."

The travel industry recorded the largest increase in email volume during the fourth quarter of 2012, according to Experian Marketing Services' 2012 Q4 email benchmark report. Two-thirds of travel brands increased mailings, which made email volume rise 21.4 percent year-over-year. The volume of emails sent by publishers was up 14.3 percent and consumer products and services brands saw volume go up 10.4 percent during the quarter. Overall, email volume was up 5.4 percent during the quarter.

An email that does not render on mobile phones would drive about 30 percent of recipients to click the unsubscribe button, according to a new report from BlueHornet. Mobile optimization is growing in importance. This number is up from 18 percent last year, indicating that now is the time to stop talking about mobile-friendly emails and start implementing them. The report also revealed that 24.5 percent of people unsubscribe because the email is no longer relevant.

Tomorrow morning, The House Judiciary Committee is holding the first in a series of hearings that will consider whether or not to expand privacy protections for email and other forms of electronic communications. Under the current rules, police only need a subpoena to read someone's emails, but privacy advocates are convinced that police should require a warrant to access someone's emails.

While it can be nice that LinkedIn recommends that you connect with friends and colleagues based on who you email, the site's access to your contacts can also get a little out of hand. Matt Haughey, blogger and co-founder of gas tracking site, Fuelly, accidentally emailed 1,138 people requests to connect on LinkedIn without realizing it. Haughey gave the site access to his email address book and was given the option to deselect people who he did not want to connect with, but instead of going through the whole list, he only saw six names. Haughey compared LinkedIn's mass email …

Andrew Auernheimer has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for illegally accessing AT&T's servers and stealing more than 100,000 email addresses of iPad users. Prosecutors say that Auernheimer was part of a group of individuals that illegally accessed AT&T's website to steal email addresses. He then allegedly gave the email list to the media blog Gawker, which published the names in redacted form.

After a year of decline, spam volumes rose 92 percent in February, according to new metrics from German security firm Eleven Research Team. The company reported that phishing emails rose 69.8 percent, malware-infected email rose 156.9 percent, and virus outbreaks related to emails went up 49.8 percent during the month.