The U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699). The good news: the bill would require the government to get a warrant to access your email or any information you have stored in the cloud. The bad: after getting a warrant, it could still look through your online correspondence without every notifying you.
The idea behind the bill is to bring the outdated 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act into the modern age. The 1986 law included a loophole that let the government access online communications and data without getting a warrant or notifying the subjects whose info was being obtained. While an earlier version of the Email Privacy Act would have required the government to notify users, that section of the bill was stripped out before it was passed in the House. From here, the legislation will go on to a vote in the Senate and on to President Obama before finally getting signed into law.
Despite its flaws, the Email Privacy Act has received support from online privacy stalwarts such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. "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," ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani said in a statement.
While the government wouldn't be required to give notice to users when requesting their data from service providers, companies would still be free to give notice on their own. A number of major service providers like
The bill appears poised to gain continuing bipartisan support, as it passed in the House unanimously and with 315 cosponsors--almost three quarters of the entire House. John Cornyn, the Number 2 Republican in the Senate, has also supported similar legislation in the past. While it's unclear if the bill will be passed in an election year or be kicked down the line, it does look like a 30-year old, pre-Internet bill is going to be updated. Eventually, anyway.
