Email Privacy Act

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to recognize several distinguished Members of the House for the next hour.

When our constituents show up on the first Tuesday in November to exercise their right of self-governance, they carry with them the dreams of a better Republic.

In 2016, the American people commissioned us with a task. They asked us to fight for jobs. They asked us to fight to fix healthcare. They asked us to roll back regulations. They asked us to secure the free world. They asked us to secure our own borders.

The House of Representatives heard them. We have been busy developing and passing legislation that meaningfully improves the lives of Americans. I commend the Speaker and his leadership in moving these bills through the House.

Unfortunately, much of the House's important work is stalled in the U.S. Senate. It is time the Senate pass important legislation and restore trust in our Republic, because before this week, the House had sent 308 bills to the Senate that are still stalled in that Chamber. This is more than any of the previous four Presidential administrations had stalled at this same time in their first year.

For the record, the House of Representatives in the 115th Congress has also passed more total bills than Houses in any of the last four Presidential administrations at this point. We are at 394 total bills passed.

The dreams of this great Republic cannot be realized by the House alone. The Senate must hear the people and come together around the often bipartisan measures we have been sending to them.

As a way of reminding the Senate, I would like to spend the next hour recognizing Members to discuss some of the important bills passed by the House of Representatives that now sit motionless in the U.S. Senate.

I am thankful for my colleagues who are joining me this evening to talk about the House's successful legislative efforts.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) to talk about the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, H.R. 3003.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa for his thoughts.

Mr. Speaker, when we learned that Planned Parenthood was selling the tissue of unborn children, America was outraged. Since then, the House has redoubled its effort to pass legislation to protect the unborn.

H.R. 7 and H.R. 36 are two important pro-life measures that have passed the House.

H.R. 36, which would prevent the killing of unborn children who are developed enough to feel pain, passed the House by 237 votes. This legislation has been sitting in the Senate for 31 days.

H.R. 7, which prohibits taxpayer funding for abortion, passed the House by 238 votes. This legislation has been sitting in the Senate for 283 days.

I would like to welcome my friend and colleague from Georgia, Representative Jody Hice, to talk about these two important bills and protecting unborn children. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Georgia for his passionate defense of life.

Mr. Speaker, Americans should be able to go about their daily lives without the fear of nuclear or radiological attack.

Representative Dan Donovan's Securing the Cities Act helps equip our cities to deal with these dangerous weapons, providing training and detection resources.

On January 31, the House agreed by voice vote to this commonsense legislation. For some reason, the Senate has failed in the last 276 days to move this bill.

I am proud to have the bill's sponsor, as well as m friend and colleague, Dan Donovan, here to share more about this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York, Mr. Donovan.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, a fellow prosecutor and a passionate advocate for these issues, for his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, in the summer of 2015, 32-year-old Kate Steinle was gunned down by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times already.

Kate's Law, introduced by Chairman Bob Goodlatte, would enhance the penalties on illegal immigrant felons who are deported and then returned unlawfully to the United States.

This legislation passed the House with 257 votes, a bipartisan coalition of Members who simply want to keep violent felons out of the United States. This bill has been stuck in the Senate for 127 days.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend and colleague, Representative Andy Biggs, to talk about H.R. 3004, Kate's Law, and the importance of securing our Nation from violent illegal felons.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona for his insight, and I appreciate his comments here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, in 2010, President Obama and Congress passed the Dodd- Frank legislation that attempted to reform Wall Street and end the too- big-to-fail problem. But instead of fixing the financial industry, Dodd-Frank was mainly served to excessively regulate local community banks, making it harder for individuals on Main Street to gain access to credit.

The Financial CHOICE Act, sponsored by Chairman Jeb Hensarling from the Financial Services Committee, replaced Dodd-Frank with a system that holds Wall Street accountable, while also making credit more accessible for Main Street America. The bill passed the House with 233 votes. It has been stuck in the Senate for 148 days.

I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney), my friend and colleague, who sits on the Financial Services Committee, to talk about H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from West Virginia for his services on the Financial Services Committee, a demanding committee and a committee that he has certainly shown his brilliance on. So we appreciate his work very much.

Mr. Speaker, with rising premiums and sky-high deductibles, Americans are hurting under ObamaCare. Republicans talk a lot about increasing competition in the healthcare market, and this next bill actually makes that talk a reality.

H.R. 372, the Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act restores Federal antitrust laws to the health insurance industry, ensuring that the market for health insurance remains competitive and affordable for Americans.

On March 22, the House passed this legislation in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion, and 416 Members voted for it. It is 226 days later, and the Senate can still not move that legislation through its Chamber.

I yield to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar), to say a few words about this bill that he sponsored.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Arizona, especially with his healthcare background. I know he has said on many occasions that he is a dentist impersonating a Congressman. Right now I feel the same way as a prosecutor impersonating a Congressman, and I appreciate his friendship and great insight.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to now invite my friend and colleague, Representative Ted Poe, to speak about the Email Privacy Act. This legislation clears up a loophole in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA, that allows the government, after a certain amount of time, to search someone's email if it is held on a third- party server.

The ECPA was passed in 1986. For the past 30 years, our technology has drastically advanced, but our electronic communications policy has been stuck in the 1980s. The Email Privacy Act allows the law to catch up with the tech. This bill simply requires the government to have a warrant if they are going to search your email.

This legislation passed on voice vote. After 269 days, the bill still sits in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I yield to my friend and colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe), to speak about this important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his hard work and persistence on this very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, this year, the House completed all 12 appropriations bills. It is the first time in decades that that has happened. I am proud that our Chamber worked hard to return to a regular appropriations process, and I can tell you that there were many late nights spent looking through amendment after amendment both in the Rules Committee hearing room and on the House floor. We thoughtfully considered these bills and offered them for votes on the House floor.

But the Senate hasn't approved any of these 12 bills. Not one. Republicans, month by month, crisis to crisis, were appropriating of the Obama administration era. But now Republicans are in charge, and without Senate action, we are staring down the barrel of another omnibus or continuing resolution. This isn't fair to the American public.

The Founders gave to Congress the power of the purse so that 435 men and women in this Chamber and 100 men and women in the Senate Chamber can spend weeks at a time thoughtfully discerning how to spend taxpayer dollars. That is our job. The House has finished its work for this year, and now we beg the Senate to finish theirs.

The House has done good work. We have listened to our constituents, worked with our stakeholders, and met each other in the middle on many bills. Now we are left just talking about these great bills because they are all stuck in the Senate.

I want to take a minute in closing to remind the Senate why we are here and why the voters offered the Republican Party control of both Chambers and the House.

We are here because Americans want fewer regulations. We are here because Americans want lower healthcare premiums and costs. We are here because Americans want a stronger stance against the world's bullies. We are here because Americans want a respect for the rule of law. We are here because Americans want our veterans to have the best care. We are here because Americans want better access to credit. They want to protect unborn life. We are here because Americans expect us to improve their lives, to work on meaningful legislation that limits government, that stewards taxpayer dollars effectively, and that guards family values.

Americans should know that the House of Representatives has heard them. We have passed bills to address these concerns. Now we turn to the Senate and ask them to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Colorado, Mr. Buck, for leading this Special Order effort and for recognizing me to talk about this issue and the general problem in the Senate today of having legislation considered, debated, and passed in a way that we can go to conference committee.

As the gentleman mentioned, the Senate has already failed to act, and is currently failing to act, as we stand here, on over 270 House-passed bills. One of those bills is a really important one, very important to the committee on which I serve.

I am proud to be on the Financial Services Committee. The tradition of

that position was held by my predecessor, Shelley Moore Capito, who served on that committee for 14 years. Ably led by Chairman Jeb Hensarling from Texas, we work in a bipartisan fashion, as much as we possibly can, to bring relief to the American people, give consumers choices in banking products, and the ability to get a small loan or get a mortgage for their house. We are doing very important work there.

So, as was mentioned, on June 8 of 2017, this year, here, the U.S. House of Representatives, where I now stand, passed H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, by a vote of 233-186. I was very proud to vote for that legislation, as I know were a lot of my colleagues.

The Financial CHOICE Act, if you are not familiar with the bill, after the financial crisis in 2007, Democrats held all the Chambers in the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, and they passed sweeping legislation that fundamentally changed the way our economy works for the worse; much more interference in your lives in banking, and the ability to make loans and consider requests for bank loans were done.

Basically, Dodd-Frank is to the financial services industry what ObamaCare is to the healthcare industry. It is a government-knows- better, one-size-fits-all, federally mandated set of laws that have hurt the very people they claim they want to help. It hurts the same people they want to help. So we are repealing most of that, and we are going to empower consumers, give you the choices back.

So we have passed this bill. Let me just give you one example of something in the bill, to be specific. There was something that was designated in the Dodd-Frank bill called too big to fail. You may remember that term, ``too big to fail.''

That is a situation where Washington bureaucrats had decided that certain banks--the theory is that they are so essential to the global economy that failure would be catastrophic. So it takes the ability to fail out of the banks' system, which then makes them act more risky. Big does not necessarily refer to the size of the company, just what the government decides is essential, too big to fail.

So the first bank that was too big to fail was Bear Stearns. In March of 2008, the Federal Reserve lent $30 billion to JPMorgan Chase to buy the failing investment bank. Bear was a small bank, but very well- known, and there was a worry that it would destroy confidence in other banks. So your tax dollars were used to, essentially, bail out banks.

So this bill repeals the authority of the Financial Stability Oversight Council to designate firms as systematically important institutions. It prohibits the use of Exchange Stabilization Funds to bail out banks. Most Americans I talk to don't think their taxpayer dollars should be used to bail out banks, so this bill would stop that.

So we passed that bill. We sent it to the Senate. We didn't think the Senate would pass the exact same bill, word for word, that the House passed. We thought they would consider our bill, take the parts they like, maybe change some parts, maybe add some parts, or move some parts, pass a bill in the Senate, and then we would go to a conference committee to reconcile the differences.

One of the biggest travesties I have seen around here of the political process, Mr. Speaker, is the failure to have conference committees in the Congress any longer. The House passes all these bills, over 300 over there; 270 are waiting for the Senate to do anything on. Anything. And we wait for the Senate to act so we can have a conference committee and reconcile the differences.

It is important to understand that no one in the House is demanding they get their way on every bill, every provision, all the time. We simply want to have a product sent to the Senate, have the Senate do their job, do their due diligence, pass legislation in whatever form they can get out of the Senate, and have a chance to go to conference committee, reconcile the differences.

There is some give-and-take there. They won't get everything they want. We may not get everything we want. You can reconcile those differences, and it has to go back and pass again.

Over the past 3 years, my third year in Congress now, I have taken to reminding folks things they learned in fifth grade, in fifth grade grade school, about how I am just a bill sitting on Capitol Hill, and how it is supposed to go to one Chamber; then it is supposed to go to the other, and they appoint a conference committee to reconcile the differences.

Instead, as the previous speaker, Congressman Biggs from Arizona, mentioned, the filibuster is abused. You have 48 Democrats in the Senate who filibuster everything. Everything. And for some reason, my colleagues on the majority side of the aisle, the Republicans, don't put the bills on the floor to make the American people see them filibuster, and obstruct, and shut down, avoid conference committees, avoid passing anything in the Senate that would require action, and, therefore, just stop anything from happening. It is a travesty of the political process.

Neither Republican nor Democrats should stand for such an abusive system in the Senate. So I think we should put the bills over there and make them act. We have actually started passing pieces of the CHOICE Act, one small bill at a time, in order to get other stuff over to the Senate, in the hope that they will just do something, act on something.

But we shouldn't have to do that, frankly, Mr. Speaker, because the Senate can simply pass any bill they want, or any Senate bills they want, and then we can consider it in the House as well. We have led by passing the CHOICE Act bill, which is the right thing to do.

You know, as disappointing as it was to see the U.S. Senate fail to pass anything on healthcare, maybe the one silver lining was the American people could finally see what happens if three Republicans join with 48 Democrats to vote against the bill. We did not have the votes to pass anything on healthcare, and the whole healthcare reform plan died at that moment.

We are sitting here today with a failing healthcare system that is going to continue to fail. ObamaCare is going to continue to fail. It is not getting any better. It is getting worse.

Look, our bill wasn't perfect, Mr. Speaker, but at least we did something in the House to address the problem. I am not saying this bill is perfect, the CHOICE Act for financial services, but we are doing something to address the problem that consumers are demanding, where they can have more choice and more access to funds to buy a home or start a small business. We are doing something about it, and the Senate is doing nothing. They don't pass anything.

In fact, we have passed all 12 appropriations bills in this Chamber. All 12 are sitting over there in the Senate, waiting for someone to act.

I think the first thing they should do is bring up the military funding bill. We are in November already. In December, next month, funding runs out. We have passed our appropriations bills. The Senate is doing nothing on appropriations bills.

They should bring that military bill to the floor of the Senate, right now, and have a vote. It passed this Chamber with a strong, bipartisan majority. Funding the military is not a partisan issue. There are votes, I believe, in the Senate and the House to fund the military.

But if the 48 Democrat Senators want to filibuster, abuse their power, abuse this filibuster tradition, which was mentioned is not in the Constitution, it is simply a courtesy extended to the minority party; if they want to continue to abuse that power, the American people should see them, ruthlessly, politically, try to shut down the military, and then try to blame the President or blame the House when they won't pass anything.

They should pass a military appropriations bill that helps fund our troops. We will reconcile the differences and send it to the President's desk. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how the process is supposed to work. That is what kept our democratic republican form of government, constitutional form of government, with democratic elections, the rule of law, a republican constitution; that is what has kept our country, to this point, functional and working well, having that bipartisan, bicameral process.

What is currently happening is really a travesty to this process, where it is being abused by the Senate. They have all these bills over there. It is high time for them to take action, pass

something, pass the best product they can on this issue, and let's go to conference committee and reconcile the differences.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the Senate to act as quickly as possible on the CHOICE Act, on whatever provisions they want to. We are trying to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Another part of that, the fiduciary rule, has really hurt consumers. These are other parts of the CHOICE Act that need action. The American people need and expect relief.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Colorado, Mr. Buck, for yielding to me. I am grateful for his leadership as a conservative. It has been my honor to serve with him this past year. I appreciate him sharing some time with me tonight as I share several important stories.

Mr. Speaker, these are stories of real people, not just some people who are distant to us. These are people that we know, people just like this.

Mr. Speaker, one early January morning in 2015, a young man named Grant Ronnebeck began the graveyard shift at a QuikTrip convenience store in my district. After his parents divorce, Grant took the initiative to find a job working at this convenience store

in Mesa, Arizona, to help his family pay the bills. He was only 21 years old. He had his entire life ahead of him.

Just before 4 a.m., an angry customer walked in, demanded a pack of cigarettes, and dumped a handful of change on the store counter. Grant started to count the money, but he saw the customer pull a gun out and point it directly at his head.

Grant tried to immediately hand over the cigarettes in a desperate attempt to save his life, but it was too late. The customer shot Grant in the face in cold blood, took the cigarettes, and casually walked out of the store.

Grant's father describes him as being his buddy from the minute he was born and a person that brightened everybody. He did not leave the store alive that night.

The customer's name was Apolinar Altamirano. He was an illegal alien with a long criminal record, including violent crimes. He was held in Federal custody, but then released while he awaited deportation proceedings. Our government let Grant down when they allowed Grant's killer to walk out of custody and onto our streets.

Altamirano should have remained in custody until he was deported, but he was set free, and Grant was killed due to the government's failure to hold this violent criminal in custody until deported.

Sadly, Grant's story is not unique. Many Americans are aware of another tragic incident, the case of Kate Steinle. Kate was 32 years old. She was walking along a San Francisco pier when an illegal alien shot and killed her. This illegal alien had just been released from prison again. He should have been held until deportation, but he, in fact, had been deported many times previously.

Even then, he was set free, only to kill Kate Steinle.

In 2014, Mesa, Arizona, Police Officer Brandon Mendoza was killed in a wrong-way crash by an illegal alien who was driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

And in January 2016, Sarah Root was murdered by an illegal alien who was drunk and drag racing in Omaha, Nebraska.

In each of these cases, Grant and Brandon, I am privileged to know their parents, Steve Ronnebeck and Mary Ann Mendoza. These are fierce advocates who tirelessly work to make sure these types of tragedies never happen to another family. I am grateful for their efforts, and I believe that we are making significant headway to stop these types of catch and release programs that allow criminals to remain on our streets.

In June of this year, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3003, the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, and H.R. 3004, Kate's Law, tandemly. These bills would end the policies that contributed to the tragic deaths of Grant, Kate, Brandon, and Sarah.

I was pleased to coauthor the first bill, which included my legislation, Grant's Law. Grant's Law is named in memory of Grant Ronnebeck.

All Americans can agree that someone who is criminally violent should not be released back on to the streets. Yet, for years, the Obama administration's policies failed to protect Americans by allowing criminally violent illegal aliens to roam our streets and neighborhoods.

These types of tragedies are preventable when the Federal Government enacts and enforces the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act and Kate's Law. Congress has begun to take meaningful action to bring these tragedies to an end, starting with the two bills we passed in June.

Chairman Bob Goodlatte showed leadership and commitment to ensure these important bills received swift consideration. These two bills, if enacted and enforced, would protect innocent Americans to prevent future tragedies like those of Grant, Kate, Brandon, and Sarah.

When the bills passed out of the House, I hoped these bills would receive a swift vote in the Senate. That has not happened. I am still hoping for this vote to take place. I call upon the leadership of the Senate to put these bills up for a floor vote.

We owe it to our constituents to put arcane tradition aside and to pass policies that will protect them. Yet, even in a Republican- controlled Senate, we cannot receive an up-or-down vote on these important immigration enforcement bills.

Why is this?

Mr. Speaker, I firmly believe the answer lies in the fatally flawed 60-vote rule. It is more commonly known as the filibuster, but the Senate's tradition is preventing consideration of nearly all legislation passed from the House.

For example, look at our current situation. Since January, the House has passed over 300 bills, including the two immigration and enforcement bills I have just discussed. These bills will most likely languish until the end of the term, in large part, due to the filibuster rule.

So what can be done about this irresponsible inaction? Well, the Senate can change the rule. Indeed, the Senate must change the rule.

Many people do not realize that the 60-vote requirement is not even in the United States Constitution. It dates back to 1917, when the Senate agreed that debate could be cut off with a two-thirds majority vote. Decades later, when deciding a two-thirds vote was found to be too difficult to achieve, the Senate reduced the number of required votes to three-fifths, or 60 of the current 100 Senators.

The filibuster is a tradition, barely a century old, less than half the age of the U.S. Constitution.

There is a place for rules and traditions, but not when they obstruct the will of American people. Is it honorable for the United States Senate to have a gentleman's agreement to keep bills from being voted on, or to dilute our representation in the United States Senate?

Americans would rather that Congress pass just and reasonable laws than to preserve extraconstitutional, institutional traditions. Americans want our borders secure and our immigration laws to be enforced.

Congress is running out of time to keep its promises to the American people. We promised to ensure that what happened to Kate, Grant, Brandon, and Sarah would not happen again. The House has done its duty. It is time for the Senate to do its duty.

There are no excuses to allow these bills to die in the Senate. I encourage my friends in the Senate to eliminate the 60-vote rule and to consider the two immigration enforcement bills that the House passed in June. We must not allow inaction to be the enemy of our sworn responsibilities as representatives of the American people.

Again, I thank my friend from Colorado. I appreciate the opportunity to say what has been on my mind for some time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 387) to amend title 18, United States Code, to update the privacy protections for electronic communications information that is stored by third-party service providers in order to protect consumer privacy interests while meeting law enforcement needs, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material on H.R. 387, currently under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Thank you for this opportunity to have this very important debate on a critical piece of legislation that has been a long time in the coming. I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Representative Goodlatte, and Ranking Member Conyers for their work and leadership in shepherding this bill through the process and getting us to this moment on the floor today. I thank my colleague, Mr. Polis, for cosponsoring this legislation and working so tirelessly over the past few years.

I think we originally introduced this bill back in 2013, and it takes a while sometimes for a good idea to reach this point in Congress, Mr. Speaker, and this is an idea whose time has come. So I rise today to support these long overdue, bipartisan ideas in this legislation that will bring our digital privacy laws into the 21st century.

Mr. Speaker, the year was 1986. We can all try to think back where we were in 1986. I am sure Kentucky had a good basketball team back then. I know Kansas did. I was 10 years old, hoping to get a new Nintendo game console for Christmas so I could play Super Mario Brothers. You could buy a ticket to see Top Gun for $2.75. In the tech world, 1986 marked the debut of the first laptop computer. It was 12 pounds. A mobile phone was the size of a small pet.

Mr. Speaker, it was also the year in which Congress passed the Electronic Communication Privacy Act. Now, this law, at the time, there were only 10 million email users worldwide. Most of us probably didn't have email at that time. Most Americans didn't for sure. Now, today, 232 million Americans send an email at least once per month. The first text message wouldn't be sent for another 6 years, and now Americans send more than a billion texts each year.

Mr. Speaker, the times and technologies have changed, but the laws have not kept pace. Federal laws regarding how we treat and protect the privacy of digital communications have been unchanged since 1986 and, because of it, our digital content is not afforded the same Fourth Amendment protections as our paper documents on our desks in our home.

Now, the Fourth Amendment protects the ``right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.'' Yet when it comes to what is on Americans' cell phones, their home computers, what might be in the cloud, or on their business computer, whatever it is, our laws allow Federal agencies like the IRS, the SEC, or law enforcement to kick down their virtual doors and search an innocent American's private communications and data storage without a warrant, without probable cause or any type of due process.

Now, many Americans take great precautions to protect and store their digital communications on services

like Dropbox, for example, or an iCloud. Yet our Federal laws perversely treat that data storage as if somehow that data has been abandoned by its owner and, therefore, that data loses its constitutional protection.

Well, in 1986, Mr. Speaker, lawmakers believed within reason that individuals and families wouldn't store mass amounts of data online. They wouldn't leave their Gmail stored online. They might have their own servers, or they would delete the emails or delete the data.

Therefore, if an individual actually left information on a third- party storage, it was akin to that person leaving their documents in a garbage can at the end of their driveway, therefore, voiding its Fourth Amendment protections. Thus, that individual had no reasonable expectation of privacy in regards to that email under the Fourth Amendment.

As we all know, virtually everyone now stores millions of emails and tons of gigabytes of data and other personal items on third-party servers. Those emails contain pictures and videos of our kids, our business transactions, our most sensitive information that the government shouldn't have access to without a warrant, without due process as required by the Constitution of the United States.

Establishing these privacy protections are critical for both ensuring that American's rights are protected, but also, Mr. Speaker, ensuring that companies that do business in America know that they can ensure their customers that if they store with them, they can protect it; that that information won't be intruded upon or searched and seized without due process of law, without their permission, without the government proving that they have a need for that information and protecting individuals' rights.

We ensure that cloud computer services are covered by the same warranty for content requirements and that all data is treated as if it is paper documents given our law modernization that is desperately needed.

In addition to updating our constitutional rights, these privacy protections do create business certainty, making sure consumers will be happy to continue to use cloud storage services.

Mr. Speaker, fundamentally, these changes in my bill codify the Sixth Circuit's decision in U.S. v. Warshak, which held that email content is protected by the Fourth Amendment. A decision which, while important, needs to be enshrined in law as it only currently applies in the Sixth Circuit. It must be applied nationwide.

Mr. Speaker, today we can cast a unifying vote in these divided times. We so desperately want to find points of bipartisanship and collegiality and to tell the American people that this Congress, this government is doing great things to help protect Americans' rights and to help modernize our laws in a way that is consistent with how we communicate today.

I thank my colleagues on the left side of the aisle for their strong work and strong support. This is a unifying bill. It passed the House last year 419-0. So it is the type of thing that is great policy coming out of the Judiciary Committee. I look forward to seeing it pass again on the floor later today.

So, Mr. Speaker, we can send a unifying vote and a unifying message to the American people today. We can dispel the myth that Congress doesn't work together, and we can send a strong message to the American people that their privacy matters.

I urge passage.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Today, the House of Representatives will again vote to approve legislation that reforms and modernizes the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or ECPA. Last year, identical legislation passed with unanimous bipartisan support by a vote of 419-0.

Reforming ECPA has been a top 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.

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, and clouds were found only in the sky. In 1986, computer storage was finite and expensive. It was unheard of that a commercial product would allow users to send and receive electronic communications around the globe for free and store those communications for years with a third-party provider.

So much has changed in the last three decades. The technology explosion of the last three decades has

placed a great deal of information on the internet, in our emails, and on the cloud. Today, commercial providers, businesses, schools, and governments of all shapes and sizes provide email and cloud computing services to customers, students, and employees.

The Email Privacy Act establishes for the first time in Federal statute a uniform warrant requirement for stored communication content in criminal investigations, regardless of the type of service provided, the age of an email, or whether the email has been opened.

The bill preserves the authority for law enforcement agents to serve the warrant on the provider because, as with any other third-party custodian, the information sought is stored with them. However, the bill acknowledges that providers may give notice to their customers when in receipt of a warrant, court order, or subpoena, unless the provider is court-ordered to delay such notification.

The bill continues current practice that delineates which remote computing service providers, or cloud providers, are subject to the warrant requirement for content in a criminal investigation.

ECPA has traditionally imposed heightened legal process and procedures to obtain information for which the customer has a reasonable expectation of privacy, namely, emails, texts, photos, videos, and documents stored in the cloud. H.R. 387 preserves this treatment by maintaining in the statute limiting language regarding remote computing services.

Contrary to practice 30 years ago, today, vast amounts of private, sensitive information are transmitted and stored electronically. But this information may also contain evidence of a crime, and law enforcement agencies are increasingly dependent upon stored communications content and records in their investigations.

To facilitate timely disclosure of evidence to law enforcement, the bill authorizes a court to require a date for return of service of the warrant. In the absence of such a requirement, H.R. 387 requires email and cloud providers to promptly respond to warrants for communications content.

Current law makes no distinction between content disclosed to the public, like an advertisement on a website, versus content disclosed only to one or a handful of persons, like an email or text message. The result is that law enforcement could be required to obtain a warrant even for publicly disclosed content. The bill clarifies that commercial public content can be obtained with process other than a warrant.

Lastly, H.R. 387 clarifies that nothing in the law limits Congress' authority to compel a third-party provider to disclose content in furtherance of its investigative and oversight responsibilities.

Thirty years ago, the extent to which people communicated electronically was much more limited. Today, however, the ubiquity of electronic communications requires Congress to ensure that legitimate expectations of privacy are protected, while respecting the needs of law enforcement. I am confident that this bill strikes the necessary balance and does so in a way that continues to promote the development and use of new technologies and services that reflect how people communicate with one another today and in the future.

I would like to thank Congressman Yoder and Congressman Polis for introducing the underlying legislation.

It is my hope that today the House will once again approve this legislation that embodies the principles of the Fourth Amendment and reaffirms our commitment to protecting the privacy interests of the American people without unduly sacrificing public safety. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Emmer).

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote for this good legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.