Early Thursday morning, with just hours remaining before the cutoff, a WhiteHouse.gov We the People petition to reform ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) and update privacy laws to protect online communications and data passed the threshold of 100,000 signatures. We’ll be eagerly awaiting the official White House response.

ECPA, while forward looking for its time, became law in 1986. This was long before many of the services we use today, including email, cloud services, or Facebook even existed. As it stands the IRS, NSA, and hundreds of other government agencies can read your electronic communications and data without a warrant.

If you want learn more, our friends at the Center for Democracy and Technology have put together a great resource page.

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