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Some Protection for Email and Cloud data
Info World reports [infoworld.com]
The U.S. House of Representatives, in a rare unanimous vote, has approved a bill to strengthen privacy protections for email and other data stored in the cloud.
The Email Privacy Act would require law enforcement agencies to get court-ordered warrants to search email and other data stored with third parties for longer than six months. The House on Wednesday voted 419-0 to pass the legislation and send it to the Senate.
Under US law, stuff left on a computer account is deemed abandoned after 180 days, something left over from when people failed to pick up their mail at the post office.
This had been expanded over time to mean just about any email you keep in imap folders or even deleted pop mail, not routinely expunged. And of course cloud storage is often left sitting that long.
Getting a warrant has not proven to be an insurmountable problem for police, apparently they are available for the asking, with no recourse to the email provider or the email customer. But at least there may come to be the pretense of due process if the Senate also passes this bill, and the president signs it. (Which he may not do).
