This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, April 12, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Your private electronic communications have become less private over the years,

not because the laws were poorly crafted, but because technology has changed

how we work and communicate.

And it's for that reason, says Cato Institute Research Fellow Julian Sanchez, that we should

again protect our private discussions from

snooping government eyes.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings to hear testimony from the Justice Department and the Commerce

Department about reform to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. It's

also known as Ekpa and it's the main federal statute that governs the process by which the

police can get access to your email, your phone conversations, and all the digital information that you generate as a side

effect of living in the internet age in part of criminal investigations.

The problem is that Aqba was written back in 1986 when technology was vastly

different. Cloud computing where personal and private files were stored off in the cloud as opposed to on your hard drive was not even on the horizon.

People were not making most of their phone conversations on cell phones, which can be used to effectively

track a person 24 hours a day, wherever they go, with increasing precision.

And so these are all problems that have arisen now because of the way technology has changed

and more importantly the way we use technology has changed while the law has remained

frozen in place.

It was interesting to see the difference at this hearing between the testimony we heard from Cameron

Carey, the younger brother of John Carey, who was there on behalf of the Commerce Department and James Baker a Deputy Assistant

...