EMAIL – Congress working on 2016 email privacy bill
Uncategorized April 30th, 2016As shared below further improvements for email privacy appear to be forthcoming in future:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-121
We’re one step closer to email being treated as private communication, a distinction that would require government entities acquire a search warrant to read emails — even those older than 180 days. The 180 day mark is currently the point where the federal government insists that email is “abandoned” on servers and, more or less, the digital equivalent of grabbing something out of a public garbage can. Of course, the rest of us live with the knowledge that archived email is no more abandoned than images you might store on a hard drive, or in the cloud.
With yesterday’s approval, the SCA’s predecessor — the Email Privacy Act (EPA) — is a step closer to becoming reality. Prior to yesterday, I had some concerns. Now, with a unanimous 419-0 vote in the House — the very place the bill typically died — I feel relatively confident that the bill has legs.
