House bill would require police to obtain search warrant to access e-mails

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced legislation that would require police to obtain a warrant before accessing private online communications or mobile location data.

Reps. Ted Poe (R-TX) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA) have signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation, the Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act. Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, police only need a subpoena, issued without a judge's approval, to read e-mails that are more than 180 days old. Police simply swear an e-mail is relevant to an investigation, and then obtain a subpoena to force an Internet company to turn it over. When lawmakers passed ECPA more than 25 years ago, they failed to anticipate that email providers would offer massive online storage. They assumed that if a person hadn't downloaded and deleted an electronic message within six months, it could be considered abandoned and wouldn't require strict privacy protections.