Meet the Bipartisan Bill That Wants to Protect Your Privacy

When it comes to laws that affect creatives, the last few months have been a doozy. We've seen enormous losses to anonymity, copyright abuses, and sweeping over-governance. In December, we reported on Democratic senator Patrick Leahy's blip of hope defence of Net Neutrality. Now, there's a new, bipartisan kid set out to protect American citizens. It's called The ECPA Amendments Act of 2015.

The problem it's fighting is this: most of the laws governing your privacy and protection pre-date mainstream computer usage. ECPA, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is an especially archaic law enacted in 1986 intended to protect American citizens' private electronic communications from the spying eyes of government organizations. It meant that, unless they had a warrant, organizations like the CIA couldn't tap your phone line or access files on your computer. However, in 1986, nobody could have possibly envisioned the vast quantities of personal data that would be stored in the cloud. As ECPA Amendment signatory Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) put so eloquently, "Americans' electronic communications have been subject to invasive and unwarranted searches based on laws written for the Apple 2, not the iPhone 6."

Amendments to the bill would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before accessing emails or cloud-based information (think Facebook messages, emails, iMessages). As it stands today, this class of communications falls outside of ECPA-defined protection and many government organizations are able to pressure companies like Apple or Facebook into giving up your data. When companies don't comply, more dubious tactics are often used. It's no wonder that over fifty of America's largest tech companies wrote to the Senate in support of change.

Why should you, the innocent music listener, care about this? Because you say some fucked up shit and your private messages can raise flags. "This is the 9/11 of progressive house"; "Did you hear Diplo's new remix? It sounds like a bomb went off in the subway"; "This song is so bad it makes me want to burn down a building." I could (but probably shouldn't) go on.

The ECPA Amendments Act of 2015 is change that everyone—not just Americans—should welcome. It protects the people that legislators are elected to represent, and that it's already supported by both Republicans and Democrats should restore some faith in the rickety ol' democratic process.

Ziad Ramley says fucked up shit on Twitter.