Under the Email Privacy Act, which updates a decades-old law, authorities would have to get a warrant to access emails or other digital communications more than 180 days old.
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The Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699), is a bill meant to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by requiring that law enforcement obtain a warrant before searching private communications stored in the cloud, the Center for Democracy & Technology writes.
The bill became the most popular in the House, gaining 315 out of 435 sponsors by the time it left the Judiciary Committee. Its fate in the Senate, however, is uncertain. “I’m proud that the House has passed this commonsense bill, and I look forward to a swift passage in the Senate”. Technology companies and privacy advocates say this 30-year-old statute was written before the rise of the Internet and so is outdated. Under it, older emails are considered abandoned and allows government access without a warrant.
Law enforcement and national security officials have been using the ECPA loophole to force email providers to turn over older messages, often without notifying affected customers or giving them a chance to challenge the document demand.
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“The level of bipartisan support for this bill is a reflection of public’s strong belief that the government must respect and protect privacy rights in the digital age”, Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel for American Civil Liberties Union said. The software giant has said that the Email Privacy Act doesn’t go far enough to address its concerns, according to Reuters.
