Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Today is an historic day. Today, the House of Representatives will be the first Chamber in Congress to approve legislation that has been pending before the House and Senate for several years to reform and modernize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA. Reforming this outdated law has been a priority for me as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I have worked with Members of Congress, advocacy groups, and law enforcement agencies for years on many complicated nuances involved in updating this law. Two weeks ago, the House Judiciary Committee unanimously reported a revised version of H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act. The resulting bill is a carefully negotiated agreement to update the procedures governing government access to stored communications content and records. Thirty years ago, when personal computing was still in its infancy and few of us had ever heard of something called the World Wide Web, Congress enacted ECPA to establish procedures that strike ``a fair balance between the privacy expectations of American citizens and the legitimate needs of law enforcement agencies.'' In 1986, mail was sent through the U.S. Postal Service, a search engine was called a library, tweets were the sounds made by birds in the trees, and clouds were found only in the sky. In 1986, computer storage was finite and expensive.…”