Email Privacy Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BABIN. Mr. Speaker, as a proud original cosponsor of H.R. 699, the Email Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), I am pleased to rise in full support of this bill on the House floor.

Since being introduced on February 4, 2015, we have been able to secure more than 300 cosponsors of this important bill, which will improve privacy protections for the email communications of ordinary American citizens.

Under current law there is little protection for the content of electronic communications stored or maintained by third party service providers. ECPA corrects this oversight and updates our laws to require a court ordered warrant that is based on probable cause before an email service provider can disclose these private communications.

In the current era where individual privacy is often overlooked or sidelined, this bill takes an important step to protect your privacy.

It is long past due that we update our privacy laws to give emails--a major means of communication today--the same protection as traditional mail and telephone calls. This bill has been endorsed by a broad range of privacy groups, including such conservative organizations as the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks.

Our bill modernizes these outdated statutes to ensure that the rights protected by the Fourth Amendment extend to Americans' email correspondence and digital data.

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