Caitlin McGarry has reported for TechHive on March 20, 2013, Feds will need a search warrant to read your email if new bill passes. If a bipartisan bill which was introduced on Tuesday in the Senate passes, the government will soon need a search warrant to go through your e-mail. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah, together have proposed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2013.
This proposed new bill would also require officials to notify individuals that their e-mail
accounts will be searched within 10 days of obtaining the search warrant. At this time, the government takes looks at e-mails or other forms of online communications that are more than 180 days old without warrants. Officials simply have to show a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing at this time, or enough to subpoena the service provider for your information.
Alina Selyukh of Reuters has also reported on this story, for NBC News, Email less private than regular letters? Congress considers law change. A proposed new law regulating authorities' access to email drew a good deal of attention in Congress on Tuesday as a House panel quizzed Department of Justice and Google experts about it, and the Senate began to consider a bill to update the rules. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which was passed in pre-Web 1986, does not require government investigators to have a search warrant when requesting access to old emails and messages which are stored online. Technical information about emails can presently be obtained with a subpoena, which does not involve a judge and is therefore easier to obtain.
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