Twenty-five years ago Friday, President Ronald Reagan signed
legislation that for the first time provided Americans with sweeping
digital-privacy protections.
The law came at a time when e-mail was used mostly by nerdy
scientists, when phones without wires hardly worked as you stepped out into the
backyard, and when the World Wide Web didn’t exist. Four presidencies later,
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act has aged
dramatically, providing little protection for citizens from the government’s
prying eyes — despite the law’s language remaining little changed.
The silver anniversary of ECPA has prompted the nation’s
biggest tech companies and prominent civil liberties groups to lobby for updates to what was once the nation’s leading
“privacy” legislation protecting Americans’ electronic communications from
warrantless searches and seizures.
Without such a change, the police will continue to be able
to get Americans’ e-mail, or their documents stored online that are more than 6
months old, without having to acquire a judge’s permission, as long as the
authorities promise it is “relevant” to a criminal investigation.
Yet there appears to be little government willpower to alter
course. Apathy and outright opposition are keeping a giant swath of Americans’
electronic communications exposed to warrantless government surveillance.
Legislation that would require police to get warrants to
access any cloud data was proposed five months ago by Sen. Patrick Leahy
(D-Vermont), the powerful Judiciary Committee chair.
The Obama administration has blasted Leahy’s proposal. And SB1011 has
yet to obtain a single co-sponsor. Leahy, in marking ECPA’s anniversary,
announced Thursday he would bring the bill to his committee for a vote by year’s end,
despite it being doomed for lack of Republican or administration support.
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