Senate improves ECPA, kills CISPA

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill introduced by committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and that would amend the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

The proposed amendment would mean that police would be required to secure a warrant before being allowed access to email, Facebook or any personal online material. Until now, police needed only a non-judicial subpoena to read already-opened email or anything that was 180 days old. The 1986 law had not, it seems, anticipated the cloud – or the virtually eternal storage of online content.

Many Americans didn’t know about these sweeping police powers under ECPA, but according to ACLU spokesman Chris Calabrese, “This is something that's starting to seem like a common sense change that reflects what every American believes their privacy rights already are.”

CWA, the AFL-CIO and a coalition of civil rights and privacy groups wrote to the Judiciary Committee to support the Leahy-Lee amendment. The letter cited documented cases of broad police intrusion into personal email and noted that, “While such a lack of privacy protection affects all Americans, minority communities, already disproportionately targeted by law enforcement, face particular burdens.”

The bill must now pass the full Senate.

At the same time, the Senate is poised to kill – for this session anyway – the controversial Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), passed by the House last week. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said that a new cyber security bill was important, but that the House version privacy protections were “insufficient.” Moreover, President Obama has indicated that he would veto the law if it passed in its present form.

Senate Judiciary panel votes to require warrants for police email searches (The Hill, Apr. 25, 2013)

Civil rights letter to Leahy-Grassley (Apr. 25, 2103)

ACLU: CISPA Is Dead (For Now) (U.S. News, Apr. 25, 2013)