The Brennan Center and nearly 80 other civil rights and technology organizations sent a letter to both houses of Congress urging immediate action on pair of bills that add crucial privacy protections to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
Currently, ECPA, written in 1986, doesn’t afford the same privacy protections to data stored with third parties on Internet “clouds” as it does to data stored locally in people’s homes or offices. The bipartisan bills would make it clear that the warrant standard of the U. S. Constitution applies to all private digital information just as it applies to physical property.
According to the groups, the bills would aid American companies seeking to innovate and compete globally, and remove uncertainties about the standards for government access to data stored online. Additionally, the bills would not impede law enforcement investigations.