A social media petition circulating with the hashtag #GetAWarrant urges users to head on over to WeThePeople (the official petition site for the White House) and sign a demand to Reform the ECPA, or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
The ECPA far predates the social web — and as a result, our Fourth Amendment protections have suffered under the development of new technologies that blur the lines of protected communications.
While surveillance used to be kept in check by natural limitations to what could be overheard, new revelations made about the National Security Agency (NSA) and their practice of what amounts to mining for evidentiary gold on social media has launched calls to reform the ECPA due to (not in small part) how obsolete it has become with the advent of the social web.
Fight For The Future tweeted:
Every time you retweet this a kitten gets a cookie and an IRS agent has to get a warrant. https://t.co/ptjY6oqqoj — pic.twitter.com/7ikRLYRUgj
— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) December 10, 2013
Over on Facebook, the advocacy group posted:
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The WeThePeople petition titled “Reform ECPA: Tell the Government to Get a Warrant” reads:
“Americans are deeply concerned about NSA surveillance.
“But the NSA’s not the only problem. An outdated law says the IRS and hundreds of other agencies can read our communications without a warrant.
“That law, known as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), was written over 25 years ago, before the services we use today even existed.
“Right now, several bills in Congress would fix this by updating ECPA to require a warrant, but regulatory bodies are blocking reform in order to gain new powers of warrantless access.
“We call on the Obama Administration to support ECPA reform and to reject any special rules that would force online service providers to disclose our email without a warrant.”
So far, an impressive 73,000 plus Americans have signed the petition to Reform The ECPA and require the government to get a warrant before sifting through your personal and social media communications.
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