Free Press Action Fund: Passing the Email Privacy Act Should Be a No-Brainer
WASHINGTON — On Monday afternoon, Reps. Jared Polis (D–Colorado) and Kevin Yoder (R–Kansas) led a bipartisan coalition in the House to reintroduce the Email Privacy Act H.R. 387, which prohibits law enforcement and other government agencies from searching through electronic communications — such as emails, shared files and text messages — without a legal warrant.
The Act closes a loophole in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act that allows providers of remote computing or electronic communication services to hand over to government entities customer messages that are older than 180 days. The bill passed the House in a unanimous vote during the previous Congress but then stalled in committee before the Senate could take it up.
Free Press Action Fund Government Relations Manager Sandra Fulton made the following statement:
“The Email Privacy Act provides a long-overdue fix that protects the fundamental ways millions communicate. People in the United States expect their cloud-based communications to receive the same privacy protections that the framers of the Fourth Amendment promised for our ‘papers and effects.’ The Email Privacy Act makes this expectation a reality. It has wide bipartisan support in Congress and passed the House unopposed last year because it makes sense to everyone. Our constitutional right to privacy shouldn’t differ depending on the means we use to communicate. Congress should move quickly to pass the Email Privacy Act.”
