The US House of Representatives easily passed a bill that requires law enforcement to receive a warrant before emails can be searched. This is the second time the Email Privacy Act has passed in the House. It failed to get through the Senate last year.
Changes were made to this iteration of the Email Privacy Act to make sure rights are protected. The bill aims to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which allowed the government to access emails and data older than 180 days without a warrant.
Google says it's happy there is "resounding support for updating electronic privacy laws."
This Act will fix a constitutional flaw in ECPA, which currently purports to allow the government to compel a provider to disclose email contents in some cases without a warrant, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Email Privacy Act ensures that the content of our emails are protected in the same way that the Fourth Amendment protects the items we store in our homes.- Richard Salgado, Google
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