Tag Archives: Privacy Laws

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/05/17/new-bill-would-update-digital-privacy-law/?mod=yahoo_free

The Wall Street Journal article talks about how a new bill would help to bring old digital privacy laws into today’s world where the internet helps to run people’s daily lives. The old 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act that didn’t even require a search warrant for the government to look at old emails from 180 days prior to the search day (mainly because back then people didn’t really store emails for that long) is the law that is currently being amended.

The law that needed a desperate face-lift would help to give the relationship between individual digital privacy and governmental digital information  collection a new harmony. When the law was brought into existence in 1986, not a lot of people would have predicted that the internet would become as big as it has. Senator Leahy, who helped to write the law when it was first introduced said “today, this law is significantly outdated and out-paced by rapid changes in technology and the changing mission of our law enforcement agencies after September 11.” With the explosion of new uses for the digital world, more problems with privacy arise.

I think that its great that the government is recognizing that the old laws need to change but I do feel that more protection may be needed. Even thought the article does not really go into detail about what the new law would mean or how it would benefit privacy, I feel like whatever it may say would still not fully protect individuals. For some people this probably does not matter much, if you’re not doing anything wrong then there isn’t really any need to have to hide anything; but for others having the government create laws to protect their privacy means less of a feeling that the all-knowing all-doing government is just that much less able to seize information from a person.