Our Email and Cellphone Data May Not Be As Private As We Think It Is

The federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act was adopted by Congress in 1986. At that time, the intent was to protect the privacy of personal emails and financial data. But fast forward 25 years and the result is that large amounts of information that one would normally assume to be protected is, in fact, freely available to companies and governments.

The modern effect of the law is to permit any data stored by any third-party to fall outside of the legal protections that protect individual privacy. For instance, geo-locator information from cellphones --not in use in 1986 --is almost totally unprotected once it's stored on the phone providers’ database for more than 180 days. Similarly, any users of web-based email systems like Gmail and Yahoo can have their emails, photos, or other documents viewed by the provider or the government without a warrant or notification to the user.

The lack of legal protections for email and cellphone data has prompted some members of Congress to propose new legislation that would update the old law. But Oregon Senator Ron Wyden says many members of Congress simply don’t understand new technology enough to create useful legislation on the subject.

Nonetheless, Wyden is proposing a bipartisan bill called the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act (S.1212), which would require the government to get a search warrant from a judge before getting access to individuals’ cellphone and location information.

Another bill, Senator Patrick Leahy’s Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2011 (S.1011) would remove the 180-day rule from the 1986 law, protecting individuals’ emails, regardless of where they are stored or how long they’ve been there.

Personal privacy has become a "use it or lose it" proposition. Those of us who care about the right to privacy need to insist that these bills are passed quickly.