Civil Society, Companies, Trade Groups Urge Senate Panel To OK House's ECPA Bill

Sixty-eight civil society groups, companies and trade associations are urging the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass a bill that would update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. It would essentially strengthen protection for email communications like requiring government law enforcement agencies to get a warrant in all investigations, a higher standard than ECPA now requires. The organizations, including Amazon, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sent a letter Tuesday to Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Pat Leahy, D-Vt., indicating support for the Email Privacy Act (HR-699), which the House approved 419-0 in late April (see 1604270067). The Senate panel is to mark up its version called ECPA Amendments Act (S-356) at a Thursday hearing. HR-699 doesn't have all the changes they wanted such as requiring the government to notify targets of investigations when a warrant is served, but the groups said "it represents a carefully negotiated compromise which preserves existing exceptions to the warrant requirement, provides a new ability for civil agencies to obtain access to previously public commercial content, and maintains the government’s ability to preserve records and obtain emails from employees of corporations." They urged the panel to pass the bill without any amendments that would weaken it.