{"id":5415,"date":"2011-04-10T11:12:58","date_gmt":"2011-04-10T10:57:45","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-10T10:57:45","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5415","title":{"rendered":"DigitalLiberty.net: Senate: Amend ECPA for the digital age"},"content":{"rendered":"

On DigitalLiberty.net is a letter to the U.S. Senate’s ranking members<\/a> from several groups urging amendment of ECPA<\/a> to comply with the Fourth Amendment in the digital age:<\/p>\n

Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Grassley:<\/p>\n

As public interest groups dedicated to limited, Constitutional government, we write to urge Congress to extend the Fourth Amendment\u2019s protections to Internet-based \u201ccloud\u201d and mobile location services. Specifically, Congress should amend outdated U.S. laws originally intended to protect citizens against unwarranted law enforcement access to their private information held electronically by third parties. The laws protecting such information, while robust at the time of their enactment, have been eroded by technological change. By closing the resulting gaps in legal protection, Congress can restore Americans\u2019 individual liberties in the digital age and ensure the Internet remains a powerful engine of economic growth, while preserving the tools needed by law enforcement investigations and removing legal uncertainty that may hamper law enforcement\u2019s effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Bringing the Fourth Amendment into the Digital Age<\/strong><\/p>\n

Among the chief causes of the American Revolution was widespread outrage at the use of \u201cgeneral warrants\u201d and \u201cwrits of assistance\u201d by British officers to conduct searches and seizures without judicial oversight. George Mason\u2019s Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted mere months before the U.S. Declaration of Independence, set forth the basic warrant requirements for lawful searches that was ultimately enshrined in the Fourth Amendment\u2014which protects our \u201cpersons, papers and effects\u201d from such arbitrary invasion by requiring law enforcement to obtain warrants issued by a court upon a showing of probable cause.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}