Press Releases
DelBene: ‘We need laws that work the way the world works’Congress has not updated the privacy law on digital information in 30 years.
Washington, DC,
February 25, 2016
Tags:
Technology
Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (WA-01) today implored the House Judiciary Committee to consider several bills that would update the 30-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). “We need laws that work the way the world works today,” DelBene said. “When [ECPA] was written, it was written with respect to the way technology was working [in 1986].” Video of her remarks from the hearing’s first panel can be found HERE and the second panel, HERE. DelBene has cosponsored numerous bills to modernize ECPA, including the bipartisan Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699), which would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant to access emails. Current law allows law enforcement to obtain emails that have been stored by third party providers longer than 180 days without a warrant. The Email Privacy Act has more than 300 cosponsors, yet it still hasn’t even had a markup in the House Judiciary Committee. The Congresswoman has also introduced the bipartisan Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored (LEADS) Abroad Act (H.R. 1174) to clarify when U.S. companies need to turn over electronic information stored abroad. ### |