Relevant Topics
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Campaign for Liberty
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Competitive Enterprise Institute
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constitution
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Electronic Communications Privacy Act
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Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
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FreedomWorks
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human rights
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Liberty Coalition
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United States Bill of Rights
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United States Congress
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United States of America
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United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
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Washington Policy Center
Earlier this morning, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard administration officials testify about the statute that governs law enforcement access to private information held electronically by third parties. Several leading lawmakers are currently working to bring this law -- the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) -- into the information age so that it reflects Americans' reasonable privacy expectations in the era of webmail, mobile services, cloud computing and the like.
Washington Policy Center joined a number of other organizations in sending a letter to the Committee voicing strong support for overhauling the quarter-century-old ECPA. The coalition includes TechFreedom, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, American's for Tax Reform's Digital Liberty Project, FreedomWorks, the Campaign for Liberty, Liberty Coalition, the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, and Less Government. The coalition is urging Congress to extend traditional Fourth Amendment protections to Internet-based "cloud" and mobile location services while preserving the building blocks of law enforcement investigations.
The coalition letter explains that framers of the Bill of Rights ratified the Fourth Amendment to protect individuals from unreasonable, unwarranted searches and seizures by government officials. But since courts have not consistently applied these Constitutional protections to private information stored with cloud and mobile providers, many Americans' private information is vulnerable to warrant-less access by law enforcement. To remedy this, the letter proposes four reforms to ECPA that would resolve legal ambiguities and affirm Constitutional protections by establishing electronic privacy standards that are consistent with the Fourth Amendment.
"Major decisions regarding the future architecture of cloud computing are being made right now," explains the letter, calling for urgent action. "If Congress fails to enact ECPA reform, cloud computing services may be designed to rely on servers outside the U.S. Not only would this harm U.S. competitiveness, it could also, ironically, deny U.S. law enforcement access to cloud data -- even with a lawful warrant."
Read the full coalition letter here.