Colorado’s Tech Community Comes Out for ECPA Reform
For the past several years, the tech community in Boulder, Colorado, has grown at a rapid pace, with both startups and more established Internet companies popping up in the foothills of the Rockies. Twitter recently established a presence here, along with Google and Microsoft, and the national startup accelerator TechStars, headquartered in the heart of Boulder, has launched hundreds of companies.
Boulder’s Congressional Representative Jared Polis has the right credentials for such a tech-savvy community. Before Congress, Polis was among an early class of hugely successful online entrepreneurs. In Washington, Polis has also been a steadfast defender of an open and innovative Internet. He was a strong opponent of SOPA, and he has been a vocal advocate for NSA reform. He is also a leader—along with Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS)—on a bill known as the Email Privacy Act, which would update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA.
ECPA was passed in 1986 and says that the government can access your email and documents in the cloud without a warrant.
On Friday, Polis met with a packed room of members of Boulder’s tech community in the offices of SendGrid, a Boulder-based cloud and email company, to discuss the Email Privacy Act. As would be expected, support for the bill was strong.
On other issues, Colorado’s Congressional Delegation has been solid on digital privacy. Senator Mark Udall has been a national leader on NSA reform, along with being a cosponsor of a Senate bill to update ECPA, and all seven Colorado Representatives voted for an amendment last year to end the government’s program of bulk data collection. But only three members of the Colorado delegation have cosponsored the Email Privacy Act, even though the bill enjoys unprecedented levels of support in Congress. With tech and cloud services playing such an important role in Colorado’s future, we hope the entire Colorado Delegation will now join Representatives Polis, Tipton and Gardner in cosponsoring this long overdue privacy reform.
Coalition Urges Senate Not to Let Companies Waive Financial Regulations for AI
CDT joined AI Now Institute, American Civil Liberties Union, and several organizations dedicated to tech policy, consumer protection, and civil rights in a letter to Senate leadership and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee opposing the “AI Innovation Labs” language in Sec. 10509 of the CLARITY Act.
Potential Avenues for Redress for AI-related Harms under EU Equality and Non-Discrimination law: A Visual Explanation
In this third instalment of the series, we look at the opportunities afforded by EU equality and non-discrimination law in providing redress for AI-related harms.
CDT-led Coalition Calls for Transparency for White House AI Framework
CDT and Americans for Responsible Innovation led a broad, bipartisan coalition of over two dozen civil society groups in calling on the White House to release its Framework for review of frontier AI models.
CDT Amicus Brief Calls on Fourth Circuit to Rein In Geofence Warrants
Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie v United States that the Fourth Amendment protected all cell phone location information, which CDT lauded as a landmark decision, but sent the case back down to the Fourth Circuit to assess the propriety of the geofence warrant at issue.
