The US Senate Judiciary Committee has, on April 25, reportedly taken another crucial step toward fixing outdated privacy laws by endorsing a bill proposed by Chairman Patrick Leahy. The bill includes vital reforms to give appropriate privacy protection to e-mail and cloud storage.
The committee passed a similar bill in November 2012, but the legislative session ended before the measure could reach the full Senate. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) applauds Chairman Leahy and all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for their strong, bipartisan support for reasonable privacy protections online.
For more information about the committee action and the bill, which would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), see "Updating an E-Mail Law from the Last Century" in the New York Times (April 24, 2013).
ARL is a nonprofit organisation of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve.
