Senator Leahy (D-VT) Makes Keynote Address at CFP on Thursday (June 16, 2011)

Today Senator Leahy (D-VT) made a brief keynote address at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference at the Georgetown Law Center (CFP). Senator Leahy urged that we must “modernize” the legal framework to stay apace with the technology of today’s age. He discussed the numerous recent data breaches, and quoted statistics indicating the hundreds of millions of records have been subject to data breaches.

Additionally, the senator addressed some of his proposed legislation. First, Senator Leahy discussed his proposed updates to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)—“The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments of 2011.”  These amendments could be the first in 25 years, and include requirements for search warrants based on probable cause in order to access information held in electronic communications. The amendments also propose new protections for location based information and require search warrants before tracking people in real time using location information provided by service providers. In responding to a question, a member of the Senator’s staff noted however, that this protection does not extend to historically collected data because the legislation intents to maintain balance (presumably for law enforcement purposes).  Additionally, the Senator addressed the data breach notification bill he introduced on June 7, 2011, known as the “Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2011.” He indicated that this will be his fourth attempt to pass this legislation, and that with each new introduction of the bill, the threat to security and privacy has been greater.

The comments were clear and succinct, with a tone of urgency: we need to work towards modernizing the legal framework to address the privacy issues that exist in our fast-growing digital age.

(Posted by: Shreya Vora, FPF Fellow)