The angry email you wish you didn‘t send last spring where you said those unflattering things. That text message you sent a long time ago at 3:00 a.m. that you were horrified to remember the next day. Those links to those videos you shared a year ago on what you thought was your private Facebook account. Sorry to break it to you, but they‘re all available to the government after 180 days.

That‘s because the law governing access to our online communications was written in 1986–before the age of Facebook, Twitter, and cloud computing. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) permits government and law enforcement officials to access private online information–emails, social media accounts, photos, and even online documents–without a warrant from a judge, once it reaches that ripe old age of six months. Under that outdated law, government agents can force the service providers we‘re entirely dependent on for communicating–Verizon, Apple, Facebook–to turn over their customers‘ private data based on the government‘s authority alone.