Senate committee slated to advance email privacy bill

The Senate Judiciary Committee this month is expected to vote to approve an email privacy bill similar to one unanimously passed by the House last month. 

Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) put the Senate’s legislation on the calendar for next Thursday. But the committee said the bill will likely be held over for another week. 

{mosads}After a similar House bill went through a number of small changes, the lower chamber approved it on a 419-0 vote last month.

Grassley has scheduled a markup of the Senate’s version of the bill, but whether it will undergo the same changes as happened in the House is unclear. Differences would need to be worked out if the bill is to reach President Obama’s desk and be signed into law.

Both bills are meant to close a loophole in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act that currently allows law enforcement officials to obtain emails and other electronic communications from technology companies without a warrant.

Though the outdated provision is no longer used by most agencies, the law technically allows law enforcement to use a subpoena, rather than a warrant, to read emails if they are more than 180 days old.

Privacy advocates and tech companies have pushed the bill for years. But it has long been held up by opposition from the Justice Department and civil agencies that wanted exceptions.

The House declined to adopt those changes. But the bill included some important differences needed to convince House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to advance it. The largest change was the removal of a provision that would have required the government to inform people that their emails were obtained by serving a warrant to the technology company storing them.