Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Schwarger. On today's show, email privacy, the Email Privacy Act, which basically requires that law enforcement get a warrant before accessing Americans' online communications,

relatively uncontroversial. It passed the House of Representatives unanimously, 419 to zero, which is kind of

crazy in an era when Congress can't seem to agree that the sky is blue. But the bill has hit a snag

in the Senate, and one of the real dividing lines is what happens when law enforcement

needs access to information in an emergency. Should there be an exception or should they still have

to get a warrant? Joining me to discuss this is Jim Trinom, a former police officer and co-chair of the

Constitution Project's policing reform committee. He argued in a recent op-ed in the

Hill that the title of the op-ed is Congress shouldn't tamper with law enforcement's emergency

exception rule. Jim, thank you for joining me. You're quite welcome. Thank you for having me.

So just walk us through what exactly this amendment would do. The core of the bill closes some

loopholes, basically requires law enforcement

to get a warrant, basic Fourth Amendment protections for digital communications. What is this amendment

that is causing such a uproar among privacy advocates? It basically allows me as a law enforcement

officer to circumvent the entire system of warrants and court orders and whatnot just by saying

that I have an emergency and you have to get this to me right now. And is there a definition of what an

emergency entails or is it entirely up to a police officer to decide what the emergency is?

It's pretty much up to the police officer. Now, what they're

supposed to do is after they declare that this is an emergency, they're supposed to get a certification

justifying why it is an emergency, but that's only after the fact. There, and there's really no

system that I've seen in place for monitoring or reviewing those certifications.

So basically, as an officer, I can just call up a service provider, provide them with no justification whatsoever.

Just tell them that this is an emergency and give it to me right now.

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