Greetings friends,

On 13 July, the Wikimedia Foundation signed on to a Digital Due Process Coalition letter asking the U.S. Senate to adopt the Email Privacy Act, a bill that would require the U.S. government to obtain a warrant 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 (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 to a neutral judge or magistrate.  

For those interested, we have attached a copy of the letter here. Thank you very much.

Cheers,

Jim