Where's the White House on Warrantless Email Searching?

EFF and the Digital Due Process Coalition (DDP), a coalition of companies and civil liberty organizations, have been fighting for years to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The law, which has been used by the government to collect emails older than 180 days without a warrant, is sorely out of date. It has also been used by law enforcement to access your mobile phone location data without a warrant. Courts are leading the charge to ensure ECPA doesn't violate the Fourth Amendment, and Congress has proposed bills to update the law, but so far the White House has remained silent on the issue.

It's time for the White House to get behind ECPA reform. Last December, over 100,000 Americans signed a petition asking the Obama Administration to support legislation to end warrantless email snooping, yet the White House has been silent. Today, NotWithoutAWarrant.com is launching to tell you how long the White House has ignored the issue. The message is simple: The White House must support an end to warrantless snooping on Americans’ email.

Courts are already leading the charge to ensure ECPA is in line with Fourth Amendment requirements. In a Sixth circuit opinion called US v. Warshak, the court noted that emails and other private communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment. As a result, many Internet providers and other companies storing online communications require a warrant in all cases, despite any language in ECPA to the contrary. And when it comes to issuing a warrant for geolocation, the third circuit ruled that a warrant could be required for location information. At the state level, courts in New Jersey and Massachusetts have firmly sided on ensuring law enforcement obtains a warrant, while states like Utah, Indiana, and Montana passed laws requiring a warrant for geolocation.

Congress has also acted. Representatives Kevin Yoder, Tom Graves, and Jared Polis have introduced The Email Privacy Act, which provides a "clean" update to ECPA by requiring law enforcement obtain a warrant before seeking any online private messages. And Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Jason Chaffetz have introduced the GPS Act, which requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant before obtaining geolocation. The bills ensure that the sensitive and intimate details about users' lives conveyed via online communications and your location are covered by the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Tell your Rep now to support these bills.

The White House must get behind these reforms. For far too long the Executive branch has ignored the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. It was only last year that the Department of Justice (DOJ) finally admitted that a warrant is required to access a person's email; however, this year we learned that the Securities and Exchange Commission may be ignoring the DOJ's stance and obtaining emails without probable cause. Help us move the White House on this issue: Visit  NotWithoutAWarrant.com to tell the White House that it must support common sense reforms to ECPA.