Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA-14), along with Reps. Kevin Yoder (R-KS-03) and Jared Polis (D-CO-02), announced recently continued and growing support for H.R. 1852, the Email Privacy Act. Since introducing the legislation last week, Rep. Polis joined the effort as the lead Democrat sponsor and worked with Reps. Graves and Yoder to gather 75 cosponsors for the bill.
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The bill would update the ECPA by setting a warrant standard for the content of communications, including e-mails older than 180 days, and would require notification to the subscriber or user, although the notification could be as long as 360 days if the court approved a 180-day delayed notification request by law enforcement and granted one extension. If I’m reading the bill correctly, service providers would be required to notify the government when the delayed notification period was about to expire.
Neither a warrant nor notice would be required for non-content records, even though such records can also be very revealing.
Intriguingly, the bill would require data collection and analysis, with a report to Congress that might give us an indication of how often requests are made under section 2703 of Title 18, including how often requests for delayed notification are made.
Related: H.R. 1852, text (pdf)