House Passes Long-Sought Email Privacy Bill
Summary: The U.S. House passed the Email Privacy Act (HR 387) by voice vote, which would require federal investigators to obtain a court-ordered warrant to access stored emails older than 180 days, replacing the current subpoena-only standard. The bill amends the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which lets authorities use an administrative subpoena without a judge's approval for older stored email, and it does not add warrant requirements for metadata such as sender addresses.
What's compelling: Under current ECPA rules, a prosecutor or FBI agent can pull email content older than 180 days with a subpoena and no judge, and the same subpoena can also obtain subscriber names, addresses, session times, payment details and temporarily assigned network addresses. The bill passed the House 419-0 last year and still stalled in the Senate, so the warrant standard for stored email remains a vote away.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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- Privacy
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