Government Surveillance, Privacy & Data
House considers requiring search warrant to get old emails
Associated Press:
Investigators would need a search warrant to get people’s old emails under a bill considered Tuesday by a House panel looking to update a nearly 30-year-old federal law to reflect today’s communications.
The Email Privacy Act, co-authored by Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., and Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., has broad bipartisan support and would close a loophole in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which passed before online storage became so convenient and inexpensive. The law gave the government access to emails older than 180 days with just a subpoena. The emails were considered abandoned at the time, when there was rarely enough storage space to hold emails longer than six months.
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This is a “modest step for bringing our privacy protections into the 21st century,” said Chris Calabrese, who is vice president for policy for the Center for Democracy & Technology.
He added that the bill still provides more leeway for law enforcement than when using a warrant to search a physical place. For example, it allows investigators to wait up to 10 days to provide notice of the email warrant to the subject, as well as a gag order in certain circumstances so that person would not be notified at all.
