[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11959-11960]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              EMAIL SPYING BY GOVERNMENT AGAINST CITIZENS

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, a few minutes ago, I sent out an 
email. I tweeted about an hour ago and posted on Facebook this morning. 
We have a world of instant, unlimited email storage, high-speed 
broadband, social media, and cloud computing. However, after 180 days, 
government agencies can snoop through everything I just mentioned. How 
in the cloud is this possible?
  Because current law allows spying government to seize without warrant 
or probable cause emails over 180 days old. Big Government can demand a 
private company turn over a citizen's information without their 
consent, without their knowledge, or telling citizens later their 
emails have even been seized. This is a violation of the Fourth 
Amendment.
  That's why Representative Zoe Lofgren and I have introduced 
bipartisan legislation to protect a citizen's right of privacy against 
government. Our legislation will update the Electronic Communications 
Privacy Act. Government can't seize and snoop through your mail. It 
shouldn't be able to seize and snoop through your emails without 
warrant or probable cause.
  And that's just the way it is.

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