Technology

A bill introduced by Democratic lawmakers Friday would extend the life of the U.S. Digital Service, the White House's digital fix-it team, for a decade. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., introduced the U.S. Digital Service Act, which would authorize the team for a 10-year term, ensuring it would live beyond the end of the Obama administration in January. “As… Read more »

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (D-WA) and Congressman Tom Marino (R-PA) introduced the bipartisan and bicameral International Communications Privacy Act (ICPA) today. Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Chris Coons (D- DE) and Dean Heller (R-NV) introduced identical legislation in the Senate. Reps. DelBene and Marino introduced similar legislation last year, H.R. 1174, the Law Enforcement Access to… Read more »

Today the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), the global voice of the tech sector, announced it is recognizing Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), and Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) as recipients of its top honor, the 2015 ITI Tech Legislator of the Year award. The award recognizes four lawmakers each year, a Republican and… Read more »

Seattle has strong, established technology companies but needs to work on its supportive culture for budding entrepreneurs, a new study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Wednesday. Seattle ranks No. 11 of 25 U.S. cities on how prepared they are for the ”technological revolution” sweeping across every industry, from health care to education to… Read more »

Imagine police rifling through your desk, then boxing up and carting off any mail or correspondence that was older than six months. Ridiculous; they'd have to have a warrant. But the same Fourth Amendment protection you enjoy at home has yet to be extended to the emails and other electronic communications that you've sent or received and are stored on servers by Internet service… Read more »

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (WA-01) today celebrated the long-awaited House passage of the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699). This legislation would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the main statute governing law enforcement access to digital records and content, such as email. The bill would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant to access emails. Current… Read more »

AMERICA’S Founding Fathers would be surprised to see who has emerged to defend the Constitution from the post 9/11 thrashing it’s received in Washington, D.C. As the nation’s press corps shrinks, Congress waffles and the U.S. Supreme Court slogs on with an unfilled seat, technology companies are stepping forward to protect citizens’ basic rights from overreaching… Read more »

Last year, the FBI flew a fleet of drones (a.k.a “unmanned aerial vehicles”) over Seattle and other cities. They were equipped with cameras capable of snapping thousands of high-resolution photographs, and may have carried devices that could capture emails, phone calls, texts and location data. One focus of the agency’s surveillance was the protests over the Ferguson,… Read more »

Almost everyone retains old e-mails, some with important and sensitive information. And yet we'd bet few people realize that if e-mails date back more than six months and are stored on a third-party server, the government doesn't need a warrant to look at them. "At this moment, law enforcement can access American citizens' emails without a warrant, even though the exact… Read more »

Dear Friend, On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee passed a long-awaited update to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), a great step forward for Americans’ civil liberties and the competitiveness of the U.S. technology sector. The Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699) – a bipartisan bill with more than 300 House cosponsors – would finally require law… Read more »