The U.S. House of Representatives on Monday unanimously passed a bill poised to update present internet privacy laws in dire need of a refresh. Titled the Email Privacy Act, it requires government authorities or law enforcement to obtain a warrant before attempting to probe emails older than 180 days.
Email Privacy Act Passes, Undermines Current Law's Loophole
Under the current law, emails that old are deemed abandoned. Hence, they're qualified for search sans any warrant, a clear example of an archaic clause the Email Privacy Act is seeking to fix.
The bill was introduced by Colorado Rep. Jared Polis and Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder, which disambiguates the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act's (ECPA) power to grant warrantless searches by the government based on the age of a person's emails.
Last year, the Email Privacy Act passed in the House before losing steam in the Senate, a winding-down ascribed partly to then Senator Jeff Sessions, according to TechCrunch's report.
Amendments were proposed last June by Sessions to the altered ECPA that sought to include exceptions for so-called emergency disclosures. This element, which could lay grounds for what's essentially unabashed surveillance, was one of the alterations that eroded the bill's chances before it could come to a vote.
Google Praises The U.S. House's Passing Of The Bill
Richard Salgado, Google's Director of Law Enforcement and Information Security praised the passing of the bill.
"This Act will fix a constitutional flaw in ECPA, which currently purports to allow the government to compel a provider to disclose email contents in some cases without a warrant, in violation of the Fourth Amendment," Salgado said in a statement of "resounding support."
Sessions, however, still holds a seat in Senate until he is finally approved attorney general, which makes it unclear whether the Email Privacy Act is to be passed this year. Polis and Yoder hopes the bill's success pushes it through Congress.
"By passing this law unanimously, it's crystal clear that Americans expect privacy protections for their emails," said Polis in a statement. He calls it unacceptable that while technology has advanced from data storage on floppy disks to the cloud, email privacy laws remain untouched in the face of modernization.
He said that the Email Privacy Act seeks to revitalize a law that's essentially stuck in an era of dial-up connections — making it for more fit for the 21st century, and helping protect every American's right to privacy.
"The public shouldn't have to wait any longer for basic privacy protections to be applied to their emails," he said.
In his statement, Polis says that the Email Privacy Act guarantees that every American will have "reasonable expectation of privacy" when it comes to their email accounts, alongside other "personal and professional content" on the cloud.
It also compels, as previously mentioned, for authorities to first obtain a search warrant "based on a showing of probable cause" before tech companies, such as Google or Yahoo, could release the needed data to authorities.
The Act also preserves legal tools required to perform criminal investigations or probes to protect the public, as nothing in the bill warps warrant requirements under the Wiretap Act, FISA, or others.
