[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 18964]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1045
     THE RIGHT OF PRIVACY MUST EXTEND TO ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, like most Americans, I store a lot on 
my computer and on my phone: family photographs, personal calendars, 
emails, schedules, and even weekend to-do lists or, as my wife calls 
them, honey-do lists.
  But this information stored on a phone, like the one I have here in 
my hand, is not private from the prying, spying eyes of government--our 
government. Most Americans have no idea that Big Brother can snoop on 
tweets, Gchats, texts, Instagrams, and even emails.
  Anything that is stored in the cloud for over 6 months is available 
to be spied on by government as long as it is older than 180 days. Now, 
why is that? Well, it goes all the way back to the outdated Electronic 
Communications Privacy Act of 1986. That act protects privacy of emails 
that are less than 6 months old.
  In 1986, those were the days before the World Wide Web even existed. 
Many of us have staff that weren't even born before 1986. We stored 
letters in folders, filing cabinets, and desk drawers. No one knew what 
the cloud was because the cloud did not exist. There was not any 
broadband, no social media, no tablets, or no smartphones. So, in 1986, 
lawmakers tried to protect emails but only did so for 180 days.
  Under current law, every email, every text, every Google doc and 
Facebook message, every photograph of our vacation is subject to 
government inspection without a warrant, without probable cause, and 
without our knowledge if it is older than 6 months.
  This is an invasion of privacy. Constitutional protection for 6 
months only? That is nonsense, Mr. Speaker.
  What is worse, some government agencies don't want the law changed. 
The Securities and Exchange Commission is lobbying to keep the same law 
on the books so they can snoop around in emails after 6 months without 
a warrant. The SEC is not even a law enforcement agency, but yet they 
want to keep the ability to look at emails.
  I suspect they want to be able to read personal financial records and 
communications without a warrant. Spying on citizens by government 
sounds like conduct reminiscent of the old Soviet Union.
  The SEC is not the only government agency that has access to emails 
over 6 months old. Any government agency can go in, confiscate emails 
that are older than 6 months without a warrant, without probable cause, 
and without knowledge of the person that they are snooping on. To me, 
this is a clear violation of the spirit of the United States 
Constitution.
  Mr. Speaker, if we go back to the days of snail mail and you write a 
letter and you put it in an envelope and you put it in a mailbox and it 
floats around the country from place to place and finally ends up in 
somebody else's mailbox, government cannot go and grab that letter and 
search it without a warrant under most circumstances, no matter where 
it goes in the U.S., because it is protected. It is the privacy of the 
person who wrote the letter and the person who is receiving the letter.
  Why should government have the ability to snoop around in our 
personal emails? They don't have that right, even though they have the 
ability to do so.
  Mr. Speaker, the Fourth Amendment makes us, the U.S., different than 
any nation on Earth to protect the privacy of American citizens. 
Government agencies can't raid homes or tap into phones or read mail 
without showing a judge they have probable cause that a crime was 
committed. They must obtain a search warrant.
  Mr. Speaker, I was a judge in Texas for 22 years, a criminal court 
judge, and saw 20,000 cases or more. Police officers would come to me 
at all times, day or night, with a search warrant. If it stated 
probable cause, I would sign the warrant, and then they would be 
instructed to go search whatever it was that they had probable cause to 
search.
  That is what the Constitution requires before you can snoop around 
and spy on Americans. If you want to search, get a warrant. That is the 
rule under our law.
  Why should our possessions and communications be less private because 
they are online? Well, they shouldn't be. That is why I have teamed up 
with Representative Zoe Lofgren on the other side and lots of other 
Members of Congress in both parties to introduce legislation to update 
the outdated ECPA law.
  There are several bills pending. In fact, these bills have over 300 
sponsors right now, bipartisan, to restore ECPA's original purpose to 
protect the privacy of American citizens.
  This legislation would protect the sacred right of privacy from ever-
increasing spying government trolls on Americans. Our mission is 
simple: extend constitutional protections to communications and records 
that Americans store online for any amount of time.
  Mr. Speaker, technology may change, but the Constitution remains the 
same. Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, 
government is created to ensure our rights, not violate those rights.
  It is about time we make government protect the right of privacy 
rather than violate the right of privacy. We need to pass this ECPA law 
and get privacy back in America.
  And that is just the way it is.

                          ____________________