EDITORIAL: House passes bill to increase privacy protections for email communication
The government needs a warrant to rummage through your personal papers, so why doesn’t the same requirement apply to your emails?
It will if a measure that passed the House this week on voice vote becomes law.
Thanks to a federal statute passed in 1986 — before the internet — the Justice Department need obtain only a subpoena to access digital communications that are more than 180 days old. A subpoena is subject to much less judicial oversight than a warrant.
While some judges have been increasingly skeptical of the government’s use of subpoenas in this manner, others have allowed it. The House bill would update the law to force federal authorities to secure a warrant per the Fourth Amendment before demanding such private emails from service providers.
“While there are disagreements about other aspects of surveillance reform, there is no disagreement that emails and electronic content deserve Fourth Amendment protections,” Google executive Richard Salgado told Reuters.
The added protection is two decades overdue and will make it more difficult for the government to invade the privacy of law-abiding Americans. The Senate, which dawdled on similar legislation last year, should advance the bill to the president.
