[Infowarrior] - Senator demands DOJ, FBI seek warrants to read e-mail

[Richard Forno]

Senator demands DOJ, FBI seek warrants to read e-mail

by Declan McCullagh
May 9, 2013 12:04 PM PDT  

Last month, U.S. Senator Mark Udall and a handful of other privacy-focused politicians persuaded the IRS to promise to cease warrantless searches of Americans' private correspondence.

Now Udall, a Colorado Democrat, is taking aim at the Justice Department, which has claimed the right to conduct warrantless searches of Americans' e-mail, Facebook chats, and other private communications.

"I am extremely concerned that the Justice Department and FBI are justifying warrantless searches of Americans' electronic communications based on a loophole in an outdated law that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled was unconstitutional," Udall said in a statement sent to CNET today.

Udall's statement cites a CNET article yesterday that was the first to disclose the Justice Department and the FBI's electronic search policies. The article was based on internal government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The senator's statement urges Congress to move quickly to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act -- enacted during an era of dialup modems and the black and white Macintosh Plus -- that currently does not require search warrants for all e-mail messages. The Sixth Circuit ruled in 2010, however, that the privacy protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment require police to obtain search warrants signed by a judge first.

Neither the Justice Department nor FBI immediately responded to a request for comment from CNET.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57583743-38/senator-demands-doj-fbi-seek-warrants-to-read-e-mail/

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