The Government Should Get A Warrant to Access Private Email Accounts

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. YODER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would add the full text of my bill, H.R. 387, the Email Privacy Act.

I want to remind my colleagues that this bill has been passed twice by the House, once on April 27, 2016, by a roll call of 419-0, and again by voice vote, unanimously, in the House on February 6, 2017.

My legislation has a simple concept behind it: if the government wants access to content stored in our private email accounts, they should get a warrant.

Currently, agencies can receive the stored email content of a user's cloud email account by sending an administrative subpoena directly to the service provider. This creates a double standard, where paper communication has greater Fourth Amendment protections than electronic copies.

This standard is outdated, as the law governing this issue has not been updated since 1986. Now our whole lives are in the cloud and stored online.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman and ranking member for accepting my amendment and Chairman Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee, and I urge all those in this process, House and Senate, to maintain the House-passed language in the final version of the NDAA that we send to the President's desk.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source