[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5685-5686]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          TECHNOLOGY MAY CHANGE, BUT THE CONSTITUTION DOES NOT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, last week Americans across the fruited 
plain filed their taxes with everyone's favorite government agency--the 
IRS, or the Internal Revenue Service, as it is called. But the IRS' job 
is just beginning. Now they will put their police hats on.
  Recently, Mr. Speaker, I learned something disturbing that most 
Americans probably are unaware of. Let's say the IRS decides to snoop 
around and secretly investigate a citizen named Joe and his taxes. 
Right now, the government can go to Joe's email provider, demand his 
email records, and check on his finances that are stored in the cloud, 
all without Joe's knowledge or consent.
  Government agencies have the authority to snoop around through 
private emails and photos as long as they are 180 days old, no warrant 
required. How is this possible? Well, it's called the outdated 
Electronic Communications Privacy Act, ECPA. ECPA was passed back in 
1986, the stone age of technology, when most Americans didn't even own 
a home computer, much less use email or store things in a cloud.
  Today we have tweets, g-chats, texts, instagrams, emails and, yes, 
the cloud. The world of 1986 is gone, and it has been replaced by a 
world with free, instant, unlimited email storage, high-speed 
broadband, and cloud computing.
  Americans keep many of their most personal possessions online 
indefinitely: family photographs, schoolwork, sensitive communications, 
financial records, business plans, personal calendars, and even weekend 
shopping lists.
  In other words, Big Government can force a private company to turn 
over private information of a citizen, without their consent, without a 
warrant, and without that person's knowledge. This circumvents the 
Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and 
seizures of Americans' ``persons, houses, papers, and personal 
effects.''
  Government should get a warrant if it has probable cause to believe a 
crime

[[Page 5686]]

is being committed. Technology may have changed, but the Fourth 
Amendment still applies to the Internet.
  The government can't tap our phones without a search warrant. It 
can't read our mail without a warrant or enter our homes or search our 
records that we keep in file cabinets. If a person stores information 
in a bank safety deposit box, the government must get a warrant to go 
through it.
  But ECPA authorizes the government to read emails and social media 
messages or any property stored in the cloud, without a warrant and 
without evidence that someone is engaged in criminal activity.
  Mr. Speaker, that's an invasion of privacy and an affront to the 
liberty of every American. Why should the law treat digital data stored 
in the cloud differently than papers stored in a file cabinet or 
property in a safety deposit box? It really is no different.
  The law must be updated to protect every citizen's right of privacy 
from the government. Government's unrestricted authority to demand 
private information stored in the cloud will kill cloud computing by 
destroying confidence in U.S.-based services and driving businesses to 
other countries which actually have stronger privacy protections for 
people who use the cloud. That's what the CEO of Data Foundry, a Texas-
based data services provider, has warned. Companies will take their 
business to other shores that protect personal privacy.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the United States. We were founded on the ideals 
of universal liberty and the right of privacy. That's why 
Representative Zoe Lofgren and I have introduced bipartisan legislation 
to modernize the outdated ECPA. Our bill protects Internet users from 
intrusive and unwarranted Big Brother surveillance.
  The bill requires the government to show probable cause and obtain a 
search warrant to access electronic communications, just as it would to 
tap somebody's phone or go through somebody's mail or look in their 
safety deposit box.
  The government would need a warrant to compel service providers to 
produce documents stored in the cloud and to intercept or demand 
disclosure of personal location information generated by cell phones.
  As technology continues to evolve and improve, Congress must ensure 
that the Fourth Amendment rights of citizens are protected, even today, 
with the Internet. The IRS and other government agencies should not be 
allowed to violate the Fourth Amendment right of privacy. Technology 
may change, but the Constitution does not.
  And that's just the way it is.

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