Privacy may be taking a hit if a recent ruling becomes the norm with regards to the contents of your email.

Brenda Barron wrote on Venture Beat about a ruling from a judge in New York, that said the government can access all the content and files in one users Gmail account. This is not the first time that an email account has come before a judge for a decision on whether the government may have access. The article points out that in other rulings the judges have not granted this permission.

From the article:

All your emails are belong to us.

At least that’s what the latest court order from a judge in New York says. The warrant, granted on June 11, states that the government can access all the content and files contained in a Gmail account.

Yes, this is a significant blow to privacy.

The subject of this specific search relates to a money laundering investigation. The judge compared this access to the way law enforcement has previously needed to seize documents to see if they even needed to be included in the warrant.

However, the decision is quite contrary to what other judges across the country have ordered in the past. Judges who have ruled counter to this order included those in Kansas and the District of Columbia, as was pointed out in an opinion written by Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Apparently, a judge in the District of Columbia ordered that the entire contents of an email account were off limits because it would allow the government to look through any old emails it wanted, “for which it has not established probable cause.”

Read the full article here