Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, police only need an administrative subpoena, issued without a judge's approval, to read emails that have been opened or that are more than 180 days old. Police simply swear an email is relevant to an investigation, and then obtain a subpoena to force an Internet company to turn it over. Leahy argues that ECPA is out of date and that police should obtain warrants to read private emails, regardless of how old they are or whether they were opened.
The ACLU says it is pleased with the search warrant portion, but not happy with the increased time to delay notification to customers and subscribers. Leahy's September amendment is here, the latest changes are here. A summary of the latest changes is here. As to the expansion of subpoenas to include some civil discovery requests:
At the request of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, the amendment adds civil discovery subpoenas to the types of subpoenas that may be used under existing law (administrative subpoena authorized by Federal or State law, Federal or State grand jury subpoena and trial) to obtain routing and other non-content information from a third-party provider.
What other information is that?
....customer name, address, session time records, length of service information, subscriber number and temporarily assigned network address, and means and source of payment information.
This is an open thread, all topics welcome.
