{{ site.title }}

ARL Celebrates House Passage of Email Privacy Act; Urges Senate to Pass Quickly

Tell the government to get a warrantThe Association of Research Libraries (ARL) applauds today’s 419-0 vote in the US House of Representatives passing the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699), a bill that updates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Passed in 1986, ECPA has not kept pace with evolving technologies and has led to an absurdity that affords greater protection to hard-copy documents than digital communications.

House passage of the Email Privacy Act today signals an important recognition that Fourth Amendment protections extend to online communications. As libraries and universities move services into the cloud and more communications take place online, ensuring the protection of information long considered to be private—including what individuals are reading or researching—is essential.

“Reform of ECPA is long overdue and today’s vote in the US House of Representatives demonstrates overwhelming support for bringing privacy laws in line with the digital age,” said ARL president Larry Alford. “The Email Privacy Act will restore a reasonable expectation of privacy in online communications, requiring the government to obtain a warrant for content, and is a key step forward in updating a 30-year-old law governing digital privacy. ARL applauds today’s vote and urges the Senate to quickly move forward to pass this bill.”

The Senate version of the bill, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2015 (S. 356), has enjoyed broad, bipartisan support. The Association of Research Libraries strongly encourages the Senate to pass this legislation soon.


About the Association of Research Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.

, ,

Affiliates