Legal Commentary

Draft Testimony on Reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act

By Orin Kerr

On Wednesday afternoon, I will be testifying before the House Judiciary Committee?s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties on Reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The hearing is a response to the four proposals of the Digital Due Process coalition, a group of tech companies, privacy groups, and individuals that have agreed on a set of principles to reform ECPA. (Plain English translation: Congress is thinking about fiddling with the e-mail privacy laws, and I?m going to help discuss some of the proposed changes with them.)

My written testimony is due Tuesday afternoon, and I thought I would post a draft and invite comment: You can read it here. Unfortunately, time constraints have made it quite short, and there are topics that I would have liked to cover in much more depth. But I figured that at the very least I could post the draft and see what you all thought. The final version is due Tueday afternoon, so if you have a response please leave it in the comments or e-mail them to me by around noon tomorrow. Thanks!

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on May 04, 2010 (boomark / email).