The Senate of the United States is a step towards better protection for emails

While electronic communications are now less protected by U.S. law that traditional communications (letters, ...), a Senate committee is to support a text forcing police to have a warrant before they can access content an email or a Facebook message. If this update of the legislation has been highlighted by several organizations such as the EFF, it remains far from being approved by the Congress of the United States.

The Senate committee dedicated to the justice approved several amendments (PDF) to amend the legal protection of electronic communications of American citizens. The text, as approved by the members of the commission, provides that the police must have a warrant from a judge before accessing emails, communications made ​​through social networks or service hosted in the cloud.

These amendments were notably worn by Patrick Leahy, a Democratic senator from Vermont, who was also an architect of the 1986 Act - that just modify its proposals. As explained ArsTechnica, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) is regularly pointed to the obsolescence of some of its provisions, dating from before the rise of the Internet. Regarding emails, for example, the text that led the police to enter without warrant emails older than 180 days. The authorities did as well as they advance "serious reasons for considering" that information may be useful in the course of their investigations. When the law was passed, we had no idea that e-mail messages can be stored online as long without being played. In other words, electronic communications are now proving less protected than traditional communications by letter, for example.

"Like many Americans, I am concerned about the increasing intrusion and unwanted of our privacy in cyberspace," said Patrick Leahy, as reported by the New York Times. "I also understand that we need to update the legislation on protection to follow the rapid success of new technologies."

" Historic step " 

This initiative was warmly welcomed Senate by several digital liberties, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "With this amendment, Congress sent a strong message to the Department of Justice," and argued Lee Tien, one of the legal advisers of the association. "While there is still much work ahead of us to ensure that these legal protections are pragmatic in the statute, we saw the Senate Judiciary Committee today align our archaic laws on modern technologies." The Center for Democracy & Technology for its part has emphasized the "a milestone" for the protection of privacy. 

The text supported yesterday by members of the Senate Committee should indeed still go a long way before any adoption. Must be approved by both houses of Congress, the Senate and House of Representatives (which are also not of the same political), before ratification by President Obama.