Tufts students likely have huge amounts of their data stored on remote servers because having physical possession of all of one's private information is an impossible task in the digital age.
What students may find surprising, however, is that law enforcement officials do not need a warrant to search much of their personal data, including archived emails, Facebook photos, Google docs and files stored on Dropbox or similar cloud−based storage services.
Currently, under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, if data is stored on a third−party server for more than 180 days, it's fair game for authorities to search without reasonable cause.
With the speed of digital developments, this law might as well have been passed in the Stone Age. At the time, emails were usually downloaded to computers and rarely remained on servers for more than six months.
However, several groups — including the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) — on Oct. 18 sponsored a "Retro Tech Fair" on Capitol Hill to illustrate how far digital technology has come in the 25 years since the original bill was passed.
With servers storing years' worth of personal information, authorities only need a warrant to access a small part of your cloud−based data.
Why, then, are our laws so woefully out−of−date to protect the public against unwarranted intrusions into their privacy?
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D−Vt.) hopes to correct this anachronism. This past May, Leahy — the main sponsor of the original ECPA — proposed a bill, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2011, which would amend the original law and remove the provision allowing authorities to pursue warrantless searches after 180 days. Major tech companies like Apple, Dropbox, Google and Microsoft all back Leahy's bill.
The bill is a sensible provision that brings the original law into step with today's server−based reality. Some privacy advocates, like the EFF, don't think the bill goes far enough but as for now, it's a start.
It's therefore hard to conceive why the bill has made so little progress in the past five months. Currently, there has been little support for the bill voiced in the Senate or from the Obama administration.
That's why we urge you to get in contact with your senators and representatives to show that you do care about your privacy. You wouldn't want authorities storming into your house without a warrant to search through letters and photos older than six months, and that's exactly what they can do to your email inbox at the moment.
