A User’s Guide to the Stored Communications Act

A User’s Guide to the Stored Communications Act – And a Legislator’s Guide to Amending It, by Orin S. Kerr, George Washington University Law School:

  • Abstract: Americans care deeply about their Internet privacy. But if they want to know how federal law protects the privacy of their stored Internet communications, they’ll quickly learn that it’s surprisingly difficult to figure out. The federal statute that protects the privacy of stored Internet communications is the Stored Communications Act (SCA, P.L. 99-508), passed as part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and codified at 18 U.S.C. section 2701-11. But courts, legislators, and even legal scholars have had a very hard time understanding the method behind the madness of the SCA. The statute is dense and confusing, and that confusion has made it difficult for legislators to legislate in the field, reporters to report about it, and scholars to write scholarship in this very important area.
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    Posted in: Internet, Legislation
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