Tech, Civil Liberties Advocates Wary of Email Privacy Amendments

The Senate Judiciary Committee is mulling a few key amendments to a popular e-mail privacy bill that is worrying the tech and civil liberties communities. Among the most problematic for these groups is a pair of amendments offered by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), who is attempting to mollify law enforcement agencies. Sen Cornyn is a co-sponsor of the bill, but he doesn’t want agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission to oppose it. One amendment that could drive privacy supporters away would give federal investigators the authority to access various electronic identifying information without a warrant in counterterrorism cases. That amendment “strikes me as particularly problematic, both because of the breadth of the expansion and the possibility it will cause some supporters … to pull their support for the bill,” said Bijan Madhani, public policy and regulatory counsel at the Computer & Communications Industry Association. CCIA represents Facebook, Google, and Amazon.com.

The committee is expected to take up the e-mail privacy bill the week of June 6. The measure would amend the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before getting access to the content of online communications stored longer than 180 days or in a cloud service. Previously, that content was thought to be abandoned. Civil liberties and tech advocates are wary of making any changes to a bill that has been five years in the making. They argue there should be no more changes now that the House passed an identical measure 419-0 in late April.