I've been in the financial consulting business for a while and I'm still sometimes stunned by the kinds of things clients will send me as unencrypted email.

What's the legal status of email? Is it treated as if it were "just like snail mail"?

My point being: wouldn't it actually be better in terms of fostering awareness and better processes if cleartext email bore no presumed privacy whatsoever?

Then, say, a couple standards might get updated, and companies might need to update their internal processes in order to comply.

EDIT: Rearranged some paragraphs. Taking the opportunity to acknowledge the alternative to my "simply stop legally blessing people's treating email as if it were snail mail": to regulate the internet further and try to impose "Intel takedowns" and/or stricter protocols than the ones that outline email today.