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House Panel Approves Bill To Protect Older Email From Gov't Snooping (usatoday.com)
Erin Kelly, reporting for USA TODAY: A key House panel voted Wednesday to pass an email privacy bill that would stop the government from being able to read Americans' old emails without a warrant. The House Judiciary Committee voted 28-0 to approve the Email Privacy Act, a bipartisan bill that would replace a 1986 law that allows government investigators to peruse emails at will if the communications are at least six months old. The bill would require federal officials to obtain a warrant before they can read or view emails, texts, photos or instant messages -- regardless of when the data was sent. "Today is a great day for not only the Fourth Amendment advocates who have fought long and hard to move the Email Privacy Act, but also for all Americans, who are one step closer to having private and secure digital communications," said Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., the lead sponsor of the bill along with Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.
The reason is that email worked different back then.
Back then, you would pull your email off the server and it would be off the server. Old emails could then be considered 'abandoned' which removes your rights to it.
Trouble is, that practice changed and the law didn't change to reflect that.
This is warrantless search we are talking about. The gov't would still be able to get anything they wanted to know with a warrant same as always.
Email is not in anyway a public forum. Your Facebook wall however with your 3,531 "friends" is fairly public.
What if all the pictures on your phone (on many they are automaticity backed up to the cloud) were to be automatically forwarded to your local police dept if you didn't delete them after six months just in case lets Assume its not their job to look at them but they could if they wanted to without having to ask anyone.
Would that also be ok?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I have not read it yet, but I would guess it has one or more of the following people in it.
Diane Feinstein
Nancy Pelosi
Harry Reid
Lindsey Graham
Mitch McConnell
Notice how, in the title of TFA, this bill has been approved by a House panel? As in, The US House of Representatives? Of the five people you've listed here, four are US Senators. Nancy Pelosi is the one person in your list who is actually a member of the House. Note also that the bill has been passed by the House Judiciary Committee, of which Nancy Pelosi is not a member, so she could not have participated in this vote. Furthermore, she is not listed as a cosponsor of the bill.
There is a related Senate bill, the "Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2015." None of the cosponsors of that legislation are on your list, either. There's also a House bill corresponding to that Senate bill, which also does not include Pelosi as a cosponsor.
Did you just vomit out a list of politicians that you dislike? This information is in the public record. It's pointless to 'guess' about facts that you can easily look up.