*Greetings friends,On 13 July, the Wikimedia Foundation signed on to a
Digital Due Process Coalition <https://digitaldueprocess.org/> letter
asking the U.S. Senate to adopt the Email Privacy Act
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_Privacy_Act>, a bill that would
require the U.S. government to obtain a warrant
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_(law)> before searching the contents
of email communications. We are proud to join with the broad group of civil
society organizations and businesses that are speaking out on this issue.
The Foundation first joined the Digital Due Process Coalition in 2013 to
advocate reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Privacy_Act>
(ECPA). In our view, one of ECPA's greatest deficiencies is the lack of a
warrant requirement for certain kinds of email communications. While
imperfect, we believe that the Email Privacy Act would go a long way
towards addressing these concerns. This letter is part of our longstanding
commitment to user privacy. We believe that, where possible, governments
should not be able to access the contents of private communications without
first demonstrating probable cause
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause> to a neutral judge or
magistrate. For those interested, we have attached a copy of the letter
here. Thank you very much. Cheers,Jim *
--
James Buatti
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94104
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