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House Panel Approves Bill To Protect Older Email From Gov't Snooping (usatoday.com)

Posted by msmash on from the nobody-should-read-my-emails dept.

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.

2 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Why should the age matter in the first place? by sims+2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I kept a diary no one would expect that entries older than six months were not still personal and private.

    How is my private communication any different?

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    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  2. Re:no parallel construction act? by mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    without criminalizing and prosecuting parallel construction [...]

    Parallel construction is an orthogonal (unrelated) problem. Yes, it can be abused to obtain a warrant dishonestly, but it has legitimate purposes too. It is dangerous, but a person innocent of substantial wrongdoing is yet to be convicted because of it...

    we already had privacy... needing a law to say we have privacy actually implies we had LESS privacy.

    You are right — we had less. There was a law that diminished our privacy — in contravention with the Constitution. That law could've been abolished by either Supreme Court hearing a concrete case, or by a new law. The former has not occurred in 30 years, the latter just happened. Rejoice.

    you're all morons.

    No, actually. We're all cows. Moo.

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    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.