For immediate release | January 9, 2017
ALA calls for fast passage of Email Privacy Act
WASHINGTON - ALA President Julie B. Todaro issued the following statement upon reintroduction of the Email Privacy Act today in the U.S. House of Representatives:
“The Fourth Amendment protects all of our 'papers and effects' against warrantless search and seizure from the moment that they’re created, but woefully outdated current law leaves the full content of all of our emails, texts, tweets and cloud-stored photos and documents open to warrantless search six months after they’re created. Last year, both the House Judiciary Committee and House of Representatives unanimously passed the identical Email Privacy Act introduced today to close this gaping hole in Americans’ constitutional privacy rights, but the Senate was unable to act. ALA calls on both chambers of Congress to immediately enact and send this uniquely bipartisan and long-overdue update of our laws to the President in time for him to mark Data Privacy Day on January 28, 2017, by signing it into law.”
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