>> In the postal system, your message is generally encapsulated in a tamper-evident envelope...

Those are all mechanisms, not legal protections. All could be bypassed by a determined person.

In both email and physical mail, someone else can secretly read your mail if they try hard enough. In both, you expect them not to. In both, we have the same question: should the government need a warrant to violate that expectation?

I can plant a secret microphone in your house. That doesn't mean I have a right to.

No, they are legal protections, and mechanisms created and used in furtherance of the legal protections.

http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/privacy-policy/intelligent-...

You can unglue an envelope over steam or on a hot surface.

That's beside the point though. People in general expect their mail correspondence to remain private, although a motivated third party might be able to defeat security.

They expect their (physical) mail to remain private because there's a massive legal framework that protects it. There's an entire section of US code regarding the operation and authority of the post office (title 39) and a whole mess of criminal code about protecting the mail (in title 18).

http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/privacy-policy/intelligent-...

So we can expect our email to be protected after we've successfully lobbied for the establishment of a massive legal framework that protects it, then?

So clearly similar laws should exist to protect email, encrypted or not.