House Unanimously Passes E-mail Privacy Act

The House unanimously passed an e-mail privacy bill that the technology industry and advocates pushed for years. The Email Privacy Act had the most public backers of any bill in Congress, and it passed 419-0. The bill closes off a loophole in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to ensure that law enforcement gets a warrant before forcing technology companies to hand over customers' e-mails or other electronic communications, no matter how old they are. Though the outdated provision is no longer used by most agencies, the law technically allows law enforcement to use a subpoena — rather than a warrant — to get e-mails if they are more than 180 days old. When the law was enacted, there were large technical limits to storing data online.

The bill's outlook in the Senate is uncertain, but pressure will quickly turn to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who has not advanced a similar bill out of committee. In the past, he has been sensitive to law enforcement and civil agency concerns with the legislation. Ahead of the House vote, he said "there is a lot of interest in taking it up" but provided no timeline. "We urge the Senate to take up and pass this bipartisan, common-sense legislation without delay," said the sponsors of the upper chamber's bill, Sens Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Mike Lee (R-UT). To make it to the House floor, the bill went through a series of small changes in committee, which privacy advocates were not happy about. However, they ended up endorsing the compromise in order to close off the 180-day loophole in the 30-year-old law.