FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, November 29, 2012
CONTACT: Ian Koski at 202-224-4216

Senator Coons votes to protect email privacy rights

Supports legislation passed today to bar warrantless searches of email, online documents

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) voted in the Senate Judiciary Committee today for legislation to amend the outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to require government officials to obtain a search warrant in order to gain access to private email messages and other documents stored online. More than 100 million Americans use Google’s Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or Microsoft’s Hotmail email services, and tens of millions use file-hosting services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and iCloud.

“In this age of electronic communication, Americans are entitled to the same right to privacy online as they are offline,” Senator Coons said. “The ECPA is embarrassingly outdated and hopelessly complex when applied to modern technology.  These important updates bring our law into the modern era of Web-based email and cloud computing and establish a simple and easy-to-follow rule: when the government seeks to access your content online, it must obtain a warrant to do so. By raising the legal protections of email to meet commonsense expectations of privacy, this legislation strengthens civil liberties at the same time as it provides clarity for law enforcement. It is my hope that the full Senate will move forward with our bill to stop this kind of invasion of privacy right away. There is more work to be done to protect online privacy rights, but this is an important step forward.”  

The ECPA was passed in 1986 – a time when emails had to be downloaded in order to be saved. Because of this outdated legislation, today’s web-based emails can often be accessed by law enforcement officials even if they do not have a search warrant. The legislation supported by Senator Coons, originally authored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee today, would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing electronic communications. It also requires that consumers be informed if a warrant has been issued and their electronic documents have been read.

After today’s approval by the Judiciary Committee, the legislation now awaits consideration on the Senate floor.

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