Sen Hatch (R-UT) pushes bill to require warrants for e-mails

Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is preparing to reintroduce a bill to increase e-mail privacy protections and set limits on the government’s access to content stored overseas. The bill would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant if it wants e-mails or other communications stored in the cloud. Under current law, only a subpoena is needed to force US companies to hand over electronic communications more than 180 days old. The second piece of the bill would put restrictions on what kind of information the government can force a US company to hand over, when that data is stored overseas.

Sen Hatch will introduce the Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act on Feb 12. He previously introduced the bill in September, along with Sens Dean Heller (R-NV) and Chris Coons (D-DE). "As Congress works to reform our domestic privacy laws, we must also clarify and modernize the legal framework for government access to digital data stored around the world,” Sen Hatch will say in prepared remarks at the Reboot Congress conference. “These two issues are inextricably linked.”