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U.S. House unanimously passes bill that stops email searches without a warrant

 

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On Wednesday, The United States House of Representatives unanimously passed a measure that will make it illegal for the government or law enforcement to search emails without a proper search warrant. The vote was an overwhelming 419-0 to create the Email Privacy Act which is an upgrade of the previous Electronics Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) that was originally made law in 1986.

Under the current ECPA, the government or law enforcement can search through private emails or email servers with only a subpoena if the data is older that six months. The new act, however, protects private emails, texts, videos, and photos that are stored anywhere from being searched without a search warrant as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In addition, this must be done all of the time and every time as their is no time period for which a warrant will not be required.

Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) stated that, “…this is long overdue. The principle here is important: our Fourth Amendment rights should apply to our emails. This bill does that without impeding law enforcement’s ability to do its job.”

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The bill heads next for the Senate where it is uncertain whether it will be debated there prior to the upcoming presidential election. Though the bill was passed unanimously, a compromise was reached with regard to notification of searches. The compromise reached concludes that law enforcement or an agency of the government still doesn’t have to notify a citizen when their email is being searched. Those that sought the compromise believe that terrorist plans or the evidence of a crime could be stored in that electronic communication and it would not be helpful to the government or law enforcement if a person was notified.

This issue has been on the front burner of loud and heated debate in the country of late. There have been two cases where a corporation has taken issue with government agencies with regard to all of this. The first was when Apple refused to give the Justice Department back door encryption access to its smart phones. The other is Microsoft who has brought a law suit against the Justice Department because they feel that the dictates of the previous ECPA are unconstitutional.

PHOTO SOURCES: Flickr; SCHA.org