This Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up legislation to reform the outdated Electronic Communications and Privacy Act (ECPA) to correct the current law’s double-standard that inappropriately provides for a lower level of privacy for communications stored remotely, or “in the cloud.” S.607, Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2013, is also referred to as the “warrant requirement” because it would level the playing field for law enforcement access to electronic content, setting a warrant as the consistent standard, regardless of how or where the content is stored. In a show of the broad support for the effort, SIIA joined with a broad group of organizations and companies urging Committee members to support the proposal—alleviating any lingering doubt about the broad support for ECPA reform, the letter brings together such a diverse set interests as the ACLU, Americans for Tax Reform, to the American Library Association and every segment of the technology industry.
Denys Emmert is the Public Policy intern at SIIA. He has a degree in marketing and political science from Florida State University.