Saturday, March 9, 2013

postheadericon Congress Tries, Yet Again, To Fix Outdated Electronic Privacy Laws

We wrote about ECPA reform ages. In case you have not followed the ECPA is a law incredibly outdated regarding the confidentiality of electronic communications. At present, thanks to some quirks in the law, the government can often access your data online with minimal supervision (among the many oddities in the bill, which considers e-mails on the server for more than 180 days "abandoned" and the government accessible without a court order). While many politicians of Congress say they are in favor of a reform of ECPA, everything always seems to happen with him. Last year, it looked like an agreement could be resolved by Congress to pass reform ECPA strong that respects the privacy of our data, also in exchange for reform of laws on rentals confidentiality of video data (essentially a favor Netflix and Facebook).


Application
, as always, return to reform ECPA shortly, and in the very, very end of the Congress, the reform of the video equipment rental ECPA reform was adopted when left in the editing room. This week, however, ECPA reform has brought once more, this time in the House by Representative Zoe Lofgren, as well as representatives Suzan DelBene and Ted Poe. The bill, known as Act online communications and the protection of geolocation, is embedded below. There is a strong bill, namely repression of people tend to turn around again. Among the reforms that would establish a

clear and consistent

standard to require a warrant for government access to electronic communications. In other words, get rid of clutter ECPA rules that change depending on the age of communications, if it is open, it is a project, etc. Now we got a rule, in general, and that this rule is

get a prescription

. It also requires that (with few exceptions) the holder is notified of the user / account, so that people really know when the government will look at your data.


In an attempt to appease law enforcement, the bill leaves many "exceptions" that allow the police to keep these rules in some cases. The bill would be higher without those exceptions, but it is impossible that the bill passes without something there.
As you can see by the name, Bill also has a section on "localization" of information. This is important because there are a lot of fighting going on regarding the privacy of your location data (obtained via mobile phones, GPS devices and others). As we have discussed many times here, the courts have been in power in all directions on the legality of law enforcement to access this type of data, so that the bill is intended to clarify that and put bans in place to intercept location information without government mandate (with, of course, some notable exceptions - including emergency if the person consents or if the data is already in the public domain).
is a good bill that deserves support. Although it is not perfect, it's a hell of a lot better than what we have now. It would be a major step in protecting our privacy against government intrusion, which means it will be an uphill battle against the interests of the law to be adopted. However, this may finally be the year when all the elected officials who claim to reform ECPA is important to get your act together and vote for real reform
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