Email Privacy Tops Tech Agenda at Judiciary Committee

In an address at the Georgetown University Law Center, committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced that a reform of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) will be his top technology priority for the panel in the coming year.

"I'll keep pushing to update our privacy laws to address emerging technology and the Internet," Leahy said.

You Got a Warrant

Advocates of reforming ECPA-- and there are many in the technology sector--argue that the law does not provide adequate protections for Internet users in the 21st century, and that interpretations of the statute have led to nonsensical distinctions between communications transmitted and stored in the cloud and those housed locally on a computer, among other concerns.

For instance, under ECPA, law-enforcement officials have been able to access emails stored remotely with a cloud-service provider that are more than six months old on the authority of a subpoena, rather than a warrant issued by a judge.