Deeplinks Blog posts about Law Enforcement Access
Following the Senate’s September hearing, the House Judiciary Committee today held a hearing on reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the federal law that regulates government access to private communications records stored by online service providers.
Congress is considering a pair of identical bills that would create a warrant requirement for any government entity that seeks personal content stored in the cloud: the Senate version is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act (S. 356) while the House calls theirs the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699).
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) fears the grassroots tech community, and rightly so. Internet users are the community that killed SOPA and PIPA in the U.S. Congress and ACTA in the European Parliament. The USTR is right to fear that the same could happen to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP).
A federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn took an admirable stand last week when he questioned the government’s authority to compel Apple to unlock a seized mobile device using the All Writs Act. That’s a general-purpose law passed in 1789 that allows a court to require third parties’ assistance to execute a prior order of the court. Apple cannot be automatically conscripted in government investigations, wrote Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, because it is “a private-sector company that is free to choose to promote its customers' interest in privacy over the competing interest of law enforcement.” Orenstein’s order isn’t the end of the story, but it’s encouraging to see a court recognize the limits of government power, even in the face of the not-so-absolute All Writs Act.
As we anticipated, the Senate Judiciary Committee's recent hearing on reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act focused on creating a loophole for civil law enforcement agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to access personal content stored by third-party service providers without a warrant, rather than on the need to raise the standard for government access to email and other stored content across the board.
On Wednesday, September 16, nine months into the 114th Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the federal law that regulates government access to private communications records stored by third parties.
Right now, the statute allows the government to obtain private messages that are older than 180 days—including web-based emails, social media messages, text messages, and voicemails—as well as private documents stored by “cloud” service providers like Dropbox, with an administrative subpoena. ECPA was first passed in 1986 before Congress could imagine the wealth of personal information that would be stored on third-party servers rather than private hard drives.
Pages
Subscribe to EFF Updates
Deeplinks Archives
Deeplinks Topics
- Fair Use and Intellectual Property: Defending the Balance
- Free Speech
- Innovation
- International
- Know Your Rights
- Privacy
- Trade Agreements and Digital Rights
- Security
- State-Sponsored Malware
- Abortion Reporting
- Analog Hole
- Anonymity
- Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
- Biometrics
- Bloggers' Rights
- Broadcast Flag
- Broadcasting Treaty
- CALEA
- Cell Tracking
- Coders' Rights Project
- Computer Fraud And Abuse Act Reform
- Content Blocking
- Copyright Trolls
- Council of Europe
- Cyber Security Legislation
- CyberSLAPP
- Defend Your Right to Repair!
- Development Agenda
- Digital Books
- Digital Radio
- Digital Video
- DMCA
- DMCA Rulemaking
- Do Not Track
- DRM
- E-Voting Rights
- EFF Europe
- Encrypting the Web
- Export Controls
- FAQs for Lodsys Targets
- File Sharing
- Fixing Copyright? The 2013-2016 Copyright Review Process
- FTAA
- Genetic Information Privacy
- Hollywood v. DVD
- How Patents Hinder Innovation (Graphic)
- ICANN
- International Privacy Standards
- Internet Governance Forum
- Law Enforcement Access
- Legislative Solutions for Patent Reform
- Locational Privacy
- Mandatory Data Retention
- Mandatory National IDs and Biometric Databases
- Mass Surveillance Technologies
- Medical Privacy
- National Security and Medical Information
- National Security Letters
- Net Neutrality
- No Downtime for Free Speech
- NSA Spying
- OECD
- Offline : Imprisoned Bloggers and Technologists
- Online Behavioral Tracking
- Open Access
- Open Wireless
- Patent Busting Project
- Patent Trolls
- Patents
- PATRIOT Act
- Pen Trap
- Policy Analysis
- Printers
- Public Health Reporting and Hospital Discharge Data
- Reading Accessibility
- Real ID
- RFID
- Search Engines
- Search Incident to Arrest
- Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
- Social Networks
- SOPA/PIPA: Internet Blacklist Legislation
- Student and Community Organizing
- Student Privacy
- Stupid Patent of the Month
- Surveillance and Human Rights
- Surveillance Drones
- Terms Of (Ab)Use
- Test Your ISP
- The "Six Strikes" Copyright Surveillance Machine
- The Global Network Initiative
- The Law and Medical Privacy
- TPP's Copyright Trap
- Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
- Travel Screening
- TRIPS
- Trusted Computing
- Video Games
- Wikileaks
- WIPO
- Transparency
- Uncategorized
eff.org/nsa-spying
