A bipartisan group of senators introduced an email privacy bill Thursday that would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before viewing private emails, photos or texts.
The Email Privacy Act would update the 30-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act which currently allows the government to take private information from third parties if it is older than 180 days. The House passed its version of the bill, H.R. 387, in February.
"Americans now expect that their email communications will have the same privacy protections as their written communications. This bill would provide that common sense protection," said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, one of the senators who introduced the bill.
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