The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Email Privacy Act last week, which seeks to modernize the Electronics Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to protect American’s privacy while also providing law enforcement with the tools needed for its investigations.
The bill was authored by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and has more than 300 cosponsors.
The legislation creates a uniform warrant standard for law enforcement when obtaining the content of communications for criminal investigations. Warrants through the ECPA will continue to be executed with the service provider who stores customer information. The bill will allow providers to notify its customers of the receipt of a warrant, court order, or subpoena. A court, however, may require a delay in that notification if deemed necessary. Cloud providers will also be subject to the same standard of warrant requirement for criminal investigations.
Under the current law in the ECPA, no distinctions are made between public information, such as advertisements, and content disclosed only to a small number of people, such as email correspondence. Stefanik’s bill now clarifies that commercial public content can be obtained through processes other than a warrant.
This important legislation modernizes our laws to keep pace with 21st century technologies,” Stefanik said. “Technology has changed dramatically since the ECPA was written in 1986 and we must keep our privacy laws current to protect Americans’ Constitutional rights while ensuring our law enforcement has the tools they need to keep the public safe.”