releases: https://polis.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=397988
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| https://polis.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=397988 | Polis responds to House Judiciary Committee Hearing on His Email Privacy Act | 2015-12-01 | 2015 | 2015-12 | Democrat | House | CO | Jared Polis | P000598 | polis.house.gov | legacy | Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) released the following statement today following the House Judiciary Committees hearing on H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act, which would require the government to obtain a warrant before searching Americans emails. With 304 cosponsors, the bipartisan bill, which is sponsored by Polis and Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS), is the most popular legislation in Congress not to receive a vote on the House floor. Todays hearing reinforced the overwhelming support the Email Privacy Act has gained across the technology sector, among civil liberties advocates, and from lawmakers on all sides of the political spectrum. It simply makes no sense that our homes, cars, and mailboxes are protected from unwarranted government searches but the government can sift through our email inboxes with impunity. This morning we also heard from federal officials who are asking for special carve-outs that would allow federal agencies to continue to subpoena Americans private emails without a warrant based on probable cause. The far-reaching support for the Email Privacy Act as written both inside and outside Congress suggests that, save for a handful of government bureaucrats, there is no support for undermining the reforms in the bill in this way. Moreover, there is simply no constitutional basis for exempting digital correspondence from our privacy laws. The Email Privacy Act is a simple, bipartisan, and broadly popular way to protect Americans from warrantless government intrusion when they go online. The Judiciary Committee should favorably report this bill so that it can finally receive a vote on the House floor, where it will pass with overwhelming support from both parties. Because of a loophole included in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, the government is not required to get a warrant in order to access emails stored on third-party servers if the emails are older than 180 days. The Email Privacy Act eliminates that loophole and brings the protections afforded to Americans digital correspondence into alignment with the protections afforded to paper mail. Polis submitted written testimony to the Judiciary Committee at todays hearing, which read in part: There are some federal officials calling for special carve-outs and lower burdens of evidence in order to access Americans old emails. I urge the committee to resist these efforts to undermine the bill for several reasons. First, the sheer volume of support for this bill suggests that Americans and their representatives in Congress overwhelmingly support the legislation as written and do not believe electronic correspondence should be subject to a lower standard of evidence than physical documents when it comes to government searches. Second, the authors of ECPA clearly did not anticipate a future in which Americans have access to nearly unlimited storage space that allows us to store our emails on the cloud in perpetuity. In asking for a special carve-out from warrant requirements, these federal agencies are asking for broad new search authorities that would go far beyond the intent of the 1986 legislation and significantly undercut the intended reforms of the Email Privacy Act. Third, the federal officials asking for these broad new authorities have not put forward compelling evidence that the 180-days loophole has served a legitimate law-enforcement purpose. And finally, it is impossible to square a lower standard of evidence for emails older than 180 days with the Constitutions 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |