California Electronic Privacy Communications Act Signed Into Law

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed the California Electronic Privacy Communications Act (CalECPA SB-178) into law Thursday. The bill “protects Californians against warrantless law enforcement access to private electronic communications such as emails, text messages and GPS data that are stored in the cloud and on smart phones, tablets, laptops and other digital devices,” said one of the bill’s author’s, state Sen. Mark Leno (D), in a news release. CalECPA has support from Silicon Valley’s major tech companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter, which have “seen a dramatic rise in requests from law enforcement for consumer data in recent years,” the release said. “Google has seen a 180 percent jump in law enforcement demands for consumer data in the past five years,” it said. “Last year, AT&T received 64,000 demands -- a 70 percent increase in a single year,” it said. “Verizon reports that only one-third of its requests had a warrant, and last year Twitter and Tumblr received more demands from California than any other state,” the release said. American Civil Liberties Union Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director Nicole Ozer called Brown’s decision to sign the legislation into law a “landmark win for digital privacy,” in an ACLU news release. California now joins Maine, Texas, Utah and Virginia in updating privacy laws for the digital age, Leno's news release said. The ACLU hopes California’s legislation is used as a “model for the rest of the nation in protecting our digital privacy rights,” Ozer said. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Democracy & Technology also released statements supporting Brown’s decision to sign the legislation.