Where do we stand on the “Email Privacy Act”? Nowhere, unfortunately


On December 1, 2015, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Bill H.R. 699, introduced in February 2015. The “Email Privacy Act” would reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The Bill would amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 prohibiting, save exceptions, a “provider of remote computing service or electronic communication service to the public from knowingly divulging to a governmental entity” the content of communication that the provider stores or otherwise maintained by the provider” The Bill would changes the rules “under which the government may require a provider to disclose the contents of such communications” and would always require “the government to obtain a warrant from a court before requiring providers to disclose the content of such communications”

In the December hearing everyone on the panel agreed that citizens’ privacy shall be protected, but there was agreement on how to limit government’s access to citizens’ data.

H.R. 699 hearing is available at http://judiciary.house.gov…

More information on bill H.R. 699 is available at https://www.congress.gov…

More comments on the hearing are available at https://iapp.org…

Text here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/699/text

For more information, Francesca Giannoni-Crystal

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