Patrick Leahy: “I want to address a recent court decision that has exposed America's e-mails to snooping and invasive practices. The…”

“I want to address a recent court decision that has exposed America's e-mails to snooping and invasive practices. The 2-to-1 decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in a case called United States v. Councilman has dealt a serious blow to online privacy. The majority--both, Republican-appointed judges--effectively concluded that it was permissible for an Internet Service Provider to comb through its customers' emails for corporate gain. If allowed to stand, this decision threatens to eviscerate Congress's careful efforts to ensure that privacy is protected in the modern information age. The indictment in Councilman charged the defendant ISP with violating the Federal Wiretap Act by systematically intercepting, copying, and then reading its customers' incoming emails to learn about its competitors and gain a commercial advantage. This is precisely the type of behavior that Congress wanted to prohibit when it updated the Wiretap Act in 1986, as part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), to prohibit unauthorized interceptions of electronic communications. Congress's goal was to ensure that Americans enjoyed the same amount of privacy in their online communications as they did in the offline world. Just as eavesdroppers were not allowed to tap phones or plant ``bugs'' in order to listen in on our private conversations, we wanted to ensure that unauthorized eyes were not peering indiscriminately into our electronic communications.”