WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The Email Privacy Act will amend the antiquated 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to require the US government to obtain a warrant to access emails, social media posts and other digital content stored by internet service providers, regardless of how old the content is.
"We know the ways that Americans communicate today is in a way in which they expect that those transmissions are private, and they expect that the government will honor that and not search those emails and not capture them for other purposes," US Congressman and bill sponsor Kevin Yoder said on the House floor.
The privacy bill had the largest number of cosponsors of any piece of legislation in the current Congress and passed in a final vote of 419 to zero. The bill also received broad support from US technology companies and privacy advocates.