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CalECPA
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California Is Winning The Digital Privacy Fight
Posted Nov 7, 2015 by Nicole A. Ozer (@NicoleOzer)
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ProtonMail On Battling A Sustained DDoS Attack
California Is Winning The Digital Privacy Fight
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Starting in 2016, tech companies can tell law enforcement in California
to get a warrant if they want access to digital data.
That’s because California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into
law the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), a
landmark digital privacy law that requires California police to obtain
a warrant from a judge before they can access electronic information
about people’s identities, where they go, who they know and what they
do.
Nicole A. OzerCrunch Network Contributor
Nicole A. Ozer is the Technology & Civil Liberties Policy Director for
the ACLU of Northern California and an author of Privacy & Free Speech:
It’s Good for Business.
How to join the network
CalECPA protects digital information held by companies, including the
content of emails and cloud documents, location information and
metadata. The state’s electronic privacy law also means that data on
consumers’ computers and mobile devices have the same protection from
government snooping as paper files.
The protections provided by CalECPA were badly needed. While technology
has advanced, digital privacy laws remain stuck in the digital Dark
Ages. This has meant that emails, text messages, location information
and all of our digital data have been open to warrantless police
surveillance.
Outdated Federal Laws
Antiquated laws on both the state and federal level have created a maze
of confusing rules. The federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act
was first enacted in 1986 – long before the Internet as we know it
today existed. But even modest efforts to update the federal law have
yet to get through Congress.
The result of outdated laws is that sensitive personal information is
at risk, consumer trust is eroded and tech companies large and small
have to waste valuable time and resources to meet the growing demand of
warrantless requests from law enforcement.
The result of outdated laws is that sensitive personal information
is at risk, consumer trust is eroded and tech companies large and
small have to waste valuable time and resources…
The numbers are startling. Google has reported a 180 percent jump in
law enforcement demands for consumer data in just the past five years.
Last year AT&T received more than 263,000 demands, Verizon reported
that only one-third of its requests had a warrant, and Twitter and
Tumblr received more demands from agencies in California than any other
state.
As a result, public concern about privacy has grown while confidence in
technology has eroded. A recent California poll conducted this summer
found that 82 percent of Californians wanted warrant protection for
their digital information. A 2014 study from the Pew Research Center
found that 75 percent of adults believe that their emails, text
messages, and location information are sensitive, and that 80 percent
of adults feel that Americans are rightly concerned about government
monitoring of Internet communications.
Government And Tech
While other states, such as Colorado, Maine, Texas and Utah, provide
updated protections for electronic information, California’s law has
the biggest impact not only because of its size but because of the
prevalence of tech companies based in the state. And those companies
had enough: The Internet Association along with Facebook, Google,
Twitter, Apple, Dropbox, Adobe and others supported CalECPA.
Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said in an NPR interview that “people want
us to help them keep their lives private. We see that privacy is a
fundamental human right… We are going to do everything that we can to
help maintain that trust.”
In its letter of support for the California electronic privacy law,
Facebook said “people deserve to connect with friends and loved ones
knowing that their personal photos and messages are well-protected.”
Google noted that “law enforcement needs a search warrant to enter your
house or seize letters from your filing cabinet — the same sorts of
protections should apply to electronic data stored with Internet
companies.”
According to the Internet Association, “California’s Internet users
expect their inbox to have the same kinds of safeguards that exist
for their mailbox, and we look forward to working with policymakers in
pursuit of this goal. It is time to update these laws for the digital
age.”
The diverse tech industry and civil rights coalition in support of
CalECPA should serve as a model for collaboration in other states.
After Gov. Brown signed the electronic privacy law, Adobe wrote in a
blog post that it “believes that customer data stored online deserves
the same protections as data stored at home or at work, and that full
Fourth Amendment protections are essential to consumers trusting that
their information is safe. Without trust, cloud computing can never
realize its full potential.”
California continues to be an incubator for ideas, and the California
Electronic Privacy Act is certainly an idea whose time has come.
Related Articles
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Microsoft Urges Reform Of U.S. Government's Surveillance Practices
The diverse tech industry and civil rights coalition in support of
CalECPA should serve as a model for collaboration in other states. The
new law will hopefully help jumpstart privacy reform on the federal
level that has been stalled for too long.
It should be a clarion call for leaders in Washington and across the
country who are long overdue in updating privacy laws to protect both
consumers and the tech industry by preventing warrantless searches of
digital information.
All tech companies and all Americans deserve updated laws that match
the modern digital world.
Featured Image: Omelchenko/Shutterstock
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