In a unanimous vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday passed reforms to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Called the ECPA Amendments Act, the update would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant prior to accessing a user’s private online content, The Verge reports. “After years of work on ECPA reform, the time has come for Congress to enact these common-sense privacy reforms,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said. The Center for Democracy & Technology praised the reform. “With the vote today,” CDT Senior Counsel Greg Nojeim wrote, “Congress took a huge step toward finally updating ECPA to ensure e-mails and documents we store in the cloud receive the same Fourth Amendment protections as postal mail and documents we store in desk drawers in our homes.”
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