Last week the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) made a public appeal to gain support for their campaign to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act’s (ECPA) outdated standards. The ECPA specifies standards for government surveillance of mobile and Internet communications. The CDT is a non-partisan, non-profit public interest organization working to protect privacy and free speech over the Internet, mobile networks and other new communications media. The ECPA was enacted on October 21, 1986, and while technology has advanced at an astonishing pace, the statute’s privacy rules have never been updated, resulting in diminished Constitutional rights when it comes to protections against government access to personal digital data. According to the CDT, the current standards do not require the government to obtain a warrant to track individuals’ movements using their mobile phones or to access many emails and documents stored on the Internet.

To advance their efforts they have created a petition to Congress to reform ECPA and invite interested parties to sign it.

For more information on digital privacy, please read the CDT’s extremely informative article entitled, Security and Surveillance, which provides an excellent synopsis of the ECPA’s history, technological changes since the ECPA was passed, Digital Due Process Coalition’s principles to guide ECPA reform and key resources supporting reform.