Technology Firms Press Congress to Tighten Privacy Law

A Reagan-era law that allows the government to read email and cloud-stored data more than six months old without a search warrant is under attack from technology companies, trade associations and lobbying groups, which are pressing Congress to tighten privacy protections.

Federal investigators have used the law to view content hosted by third-party providers for civil and criminal lawsuits, in some cases without giving notice to the individual being investigated. Nearly 30 years after Congress passed the law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, cloud computing companies are scrambling to reassure their customers, and some clients are taking their business to other countries. Silicon Valley giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google say they will no longer hand over their customers’ data without a search warrant. But smaller web hosting and cloud computing companies may be outmuscled by law enforcement officials as they try to protect their customers, said Ron Yokubaitis, the co-chief executive officer of Data Foundry, a data center company based in Texas.