House Advances Email Privacy Act
Good news for privacy activists – the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday unanimously voted in favor of requiring a warrant to search emails.
Image credit: opensource.com (Flickr)
Under the Email Privacy Act, the government must now get a probable cause warrant from a judge before gaining access to private communications and documents stored online with companies such as Facebook, Google and Dropbox.
The bill has been described as a ‘long-overdue update’ to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
However, although the bill has been applauded, there are many who still see room for improvement. In particular, the Email Privacy Act doesn’t require the government to notify users to obtain their online data from service providers.
