Ted Poe: “Last week Americans across the fruited plain filed their taxes with everyone's favorite government agency--the IRS, or…”

“Last week Americans across the fruited plain filed their taxes with everyone's favorite government agency--the IRS, or the Internal Revenue Service, as it is called. But the IRS' job is just beginning. Now they will put their police hats on. Recently, Mr. Speaker, I learned something disturbing that most Americans probably are unaware of. Let's say the IRS decides to snoop around and secretly investigate a citizen named Joe and his taxes. Right now, the government can go to Joe's email provider, demand his email records, and check on his finances that are stored in the cloud, all without Joe's knowledge or consent. Government agencies have the authority to snoop around through private emails and photos as long as they are 180 days old, no warrant required. How is this possible? Well, it's called the outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act, ECPA. ECPA was passed back in 1986, the stone age of technology, when most Americans didn't even own a home computer, much less use email or store things in a cloud. Today we have tweets, g-chats, texts, instagrams, emails and, yes, the cloud. The world of 1986 is gone, and it has been replaced by a world with free, instant, unlimited email storage, high-speed broadband, and cloud computing. Americans keep many of their most personal possessions online indefinitely: family photographs, schoolwork, sensitive communications, financial records, business plans, personal calendars, and even weekend shopping lists.…”