Orrin Hatch: “I rise today to discuss international data privacy. This is a critically important issue that has become all the more…”

“I rise today to discuss international data privacy. This is a critically important issue that has become all the more important over the years as we become more sophisticated. It has become all the more pressing in recent months as a result of court decisions impacting law enforcement's ability to access electronic communications overseas. I don't think it would surprise anyone to hear me say that our privacy laws have not kept pace with technological developments. The primary statute that governs law enforcement's ability to access electronic data, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA, was enacted over 30 years ago--long before most people had even heard of email or the internet. ECPA was drafted in a world in which electronic data was stored on personal computers or on servers located in offices or homes. It presumes a world where data is in one location and where in order to access data, a person simply goes to the relevant location and retrieves it. But that is not the world we live in, at least not today. Nowadays, much of our data is stored not on home or office computers but in the cloud, a network of remote servers spread throughout the world that allows us to access data from literally anywhere. The rise of cloud and remote network computing has transformed the way companies and individuals store data.…”