Kashmir Hill reports:
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)– which protects electronic communications from government searches — was created in 1986 and is ripe for a makeover. The Senate Judiciary Committee discussed the need for a facelift for the Act today with attorneys from law enforcement, the Commerce Department, the tech industry, and civil rights groups.
Read more on Forbes.
Listening to the hearing this morning, it seems likely that e-mail will get greater protections when ECPA is updated. But the government has yet to make its recommendations/wish list clear, a point that several Senators hammered home this morning/ Senator Whitehouse noted that it’s “late in the game.” Both he and Senator Leahy commented that the government should have come to the hearings with a position or recommendation for Congress, unless, as Senator Whitehouse noted, it wants Congress to just decide while the government merely spectates or comments.