Recently, the House of Representatives passed the Email Privacy Act. The Email Privacy Act would require the government to obtain a warrant in order to read someone’s emails. Surprisingly, it passed the House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support. In fact, 419 of the 434 Representatives voted for it, and not a single Representative voted against it. 15 Representatives, including Paul Ryan (who rarely votes, since he’s the Speaker of the House), didn’t vote at all. Typically, legislation getting passed by Congress with bipartisan support is a big red flag (see the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, the Every Student Succeeds Act, etc.), but this is an exception.

The 4th Amendment to the Constitution says that the government must obtain a warrant issued by probable cause in order to search someone’s stuff. I think we can all agree that the 4th Amendment should be obeyed. Would you really be comfortable with the government knowing everything you did? I didn’t think so. Unfortunately, the current privacy laws don’t apply to emails, which seems a little odd. “Why should the government be allowed to read our emails without a warrant?” you might ask. Well, the most recent federal law passed to prevent warrantless surveillance is the Electronics Communication Privacy Act (ECPA), which was signed by President Ronald Reagan to require the obtaining of a warrant for the government to listen to people’s phone calls… in 1986.

Back in the ancient times of 1986, email wasn’t really a thing. It existed, but it was highly limited. So, when Congress wrote ECPA, they didn’t think of mentioning emails. They only mentioned phone calls. As a result, there is no law that requires the government to get a warrant for emails. The government is allowed to read your emails warrantlessly and randomly without your knowledge or consent, so long as your emails are more than 180 days old.

Conspiracy theorists have always claimed that the government was spying on us. Initially, these conspiracy theories seemed crazy and highly unlikely to be true. But that changed in June 2013, when Edward Snowden blew the whistle that the National Security Agency was wiretapping the online activity of millions of Americans through a program called PRISM. PRISM was started by George W. Bush, and Barack Obama has continued it.

Some people say that they don’t need the right to privacy, because they have nothing to hide. But that’s no better than saying that you don’t need free speech because you have nothing to say, or that you don’t need the right to remain silent because you have nothing that could incriminate you.

I urge the Senate to act on and vote for the Email Privacy Act without delay. We need to restore the right to privacy now.

If you'd like to learn more about the Email Privacy Act, watch the fantastic video about it here by FreedomWorks, hosted by Julie Borowski.