Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) has introduced a bill that would require law enforcement authorities to obtain a warrant before searching someone’s email or any other data stored on a cloud server. It’s an update to legislation that Leahy wrote in 1986, the Electronic Communications Protection Act, which spelled out specific laws for electronic surveillance and wiretapping. Obviously a lot has happened in electronic communications between now and then. Current law says that police don’t need a warrant to look at an email that’s over 180 days, Leahy’s bill would eliminate a time limit and require the establishment of probable cause and a warrant in all cases.
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