Rep Yoder: Agencies seizing e-mails is ‘much worse’ than NSA spying

A decades-old law on emails is more of a threat to privacy than National Security Agency surveillance, according to Rep Kevin Yoder (R-KS). He expressed deep concern over the 1986 Electronic Privacy Communications Act (ECPA), which allows police to obtain emails without a warrant.

“It’s much worse than the debates we’re having over whether the NSA should be able to theoretically review phone call” data, Rep Yoder said. “This is much worse in that they’re actually reading the emails,” he said.

Rep Yoder’s bill, the Email Privacy Act, would update the ECPA to require law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before accessing digital communications including emails. Currently, officials can access any email that has been stored for more than six months without a warrant. The bill has wide support in the House, Rep Yoder said. He and co-sponsor Rep Jared Polis (D-CO) touted the bill’s 214 co-sponsors, just shy of half the members of the House.

“We’re very close to what we in Congress like to call a magic number,” Polis said, encouraging viewers to ask their member of Congress to support the bill. Yoder asked viewers to “differentiate this from the NSA issue” when contacting their members of Congress. While both issues deal with privacy, “it is different politically,” he said. No members have come out publicly against the bill, despite pushback from federal agencies, the lawmakers said.