Pertingo Computer Support

Way back in 1986, Congress passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. This was ground breaking legislation at a time when very few people knew about the Internet and most electronic communication consisted of text transmitted over phone lines or faxes. Twenty-five years later, that piece of legislation doesn't help us (or the courts) figure out what to do about the plethora of Internet services, particularly those that hold our personal data.

It turns out that many jurists interpret the Fourth Ammendment (protection against illegal search and seizure) as not applying to your personal information that is stored on a machine owned by a third party and housed outside your home. This means that law enforcement officials can take a look at your gmail, or Dropbox files, or documents stored in Evernote or any of the thousands of other pieces of information out there without having to obtain a search warrant.

Now if you're like me, you probably don't have anything out there to get anyone excited about. Nonetheless, given enough scraps of information about a person's life will likely allow someone with malice of intent to create an interesting set of coincidences that can leave you uncomfortable explaining.

Recently, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced legislation to plug up this hole. Instead of trying to continuously update the laws for the new situations created by technology, why doesn't Congress pass legislation that says our bits should be treated just like our paper has been in the past with respect to the existing laws. That would make things easier for most of us.