TechFreedom has joined with a wide coalition of organizations to draft a petition urging Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which has not been updated since it was enacted in 1986. ECPA determines when the government has authority to read your email, access your private photographs and documents you store online, track your location via your mobile phone, and more. Technology has changed quite a bit since 1986 and ECPA has not aged well. It has been interpreted in different ways in different jurisdictions and even law enforcement agencies have trouble figuring out what they can and cannot do.
The petition reads as follows:
The government should be required to go to a judge and get a warrant before it can read our email, access private photographs and documents we store online, or track our location using our mobile phones. Please support legislation that would update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) to require warrants for this sensitive information and to require the government to report publicly on the use of its surveillance powers.