Utah Enacts Significant Location and Communications Privacy Bill

On Monday, Utah became the first state to enact legislation simultaneously protecting location information and electronic communications content, regardless of age, from government access—ensuring that state and local law enforcement can only access that sensitive information when there is good reason to believe that it will reveal evidence of a crime, or in true emergencies.

This is notable for two reasons.

• First, these are the primary two reforms we seek to the outdated federal law that governs our privacy in the digital age, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). While Utah is not the first state to enact location protections (that wasMontana followed by Maine) or protections for electronic communications content (that was Texas), Utah has shown that these reforms can pass as a package. Utah can now be a proving ground for ECPA reform, demonstrating that law enforcement can effectively do its job while simultaneously protecting privacy.

• Second, Utah’s new law is also remarkable because of its breadth. The law covers “location information, stored data, or transmitted data of an electronic device.” There is no question that this language provides protections for location information and for electronic communications content regardless of age. It’s also clear that the law covers the use of controversial StingRay technology. There is also every reason to believe that “stored and transmitted data” coversmetadata. Ever since theNSA revelations began last summer, the sensitivity of metadata has been widely recognized, and what to do about it has been the million-dollar question. Utah’s new law demonstrates that, as theACLU has recommended, requiring a warrant for law enforcement to access metadata is sensible and workable policy.

States in every region of the country are actively considering legislation protecting location information and electronic communications content, sometimes together in one package. We hope more states will follow Utah’s lead—and we’ll continue working with state legislators to make that happen.

猶他州頒布重要位置和通訊隱私法案

週一，猶他成為了第一個國家同時制訂法律，保護位置信息和電子通訊的內容，無論年齡大小，從政府獲得，確保州和地方執法只能訪問敏感信息時，有充分的理由相信，將揭示犯罪的，或真正的緊急情況的證據。

這是值得注意的有兩個原因。

首先，這些是主要的兩項改革，我們尋求，管轄在數字時代，電子通訊隱私法（ ECPA ）我們的隱私過時的聯邦法律。雖然猶他不是第一個國家制定位置的保護（這是蒙大拿其次是緬因州）或保護電子通訊的內容（這是得克薩斯州） ，猶他表示，這些改革可以傳遞一個包。猶他現在可以為ECPA改革的試驗場，表明執法部門能有效地完成其工作，同時保護隱私。

其次，猶他州的新法是因為它的廣度也可圈可點。該法律涵蓋“位置信息，存儲的數據，或電子設備的傳輸的數據。 ”毫無疑問，這種語言提供保護的位置信息和電子通訊的內容，不論年齡。而且，很明顯，該法律涵蓋的使用有爭議的黃貂魚的技術。也有充分的理由相信， “存儲和傳輸的數據”包括元數據。自從美國國家安全局的啟示始於去年夏天，元數據敏感性已被廣泛認可，並且怎麼做它一直是百萬美元的問題。猶他州的新法表明，作為美國公民自由聯盟建議，要求手令執法訪問元數據是明智和可行的政策。

國家在全國各個地區都在積極考慮立法保護位置信息和電子通訊的內容，有時一起在一個封裝中。我們希望有更多的國家將按照猶他州的鉛，我們將繼續與州議員合作，使這種情況發生。