4 tech problems America's lawmakers should fix

The U.S. Capital Building
Congress might want to take up one of these tech policies when it gets back in session. (image: Wikimedia)

Congress is in the middle of a recess, but the experience probably doesn’t feel much like a vacation to many representatives and senators.

Constituents are yelling at them in town-hall meetings about health care, tax reform, the budget and the environment, and other topics that have boiled over at the start of the Trump administration.

Perhaps you are among those cranky constituents. If so, please bring up the following tech-policy problems that could all be addressed by legislation that already exists — and in some cases, has spent years kicking around Capitol Hill.

Broadband privacy

The head-spinning rush by Republicans in the House and the Senate to block pending Federal Communications Commission rules banning Internet providers from selling the browsing histories of their subscribers without permission has gone over about as well as a Senate filibuster consisting of recitations of the browsing histories of randomly-selected taxpayers.

For instance, on Thursday night, constituents of Sen. Jeff Flake (R.-Ariz.) tore into him for backing that bill and suggesting they would have to wait for comprehensive privacy legislation covering not just Internet providers but sites like Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Facebook (FB). One asked the senator if he’d sell his own browser history if the crowd took up a collection to pay for it.

There is a bill that would reverse this change — Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) has proposed one that would restore the pending rules. But S.878 has no realistic chance of passing with the current republican majority and president. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t ask you representative about it.

Email searches

Next up on the privacy checklist, we have the woefully overdue reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. This living fossil of a law assumes that email stored online for more than 180 days is abandoned and therefore shouldn’t require a warrant for law-enforcement investigators to search.

That was technologically unsound in the 80’s and in the age of webmail it’s absurd.

Sure, major email providers insist on warrants anyway, but are you sure you don’t have any data stored online with a smaller company that doesn’t want to tangle with prosecutors in court?

The House has already done its job by passing the Email Privacy Act, sponsored by Rep. Kevin Yoder (R.-Kans.), in a voice vote — the closest thing to a unanimous vote. Senators, go and do likewise.

Border device searches

The odds of having Customs and Border Protection agents seize and search your phone when you return from an international trip remain below a hundredth of a percent — but CBP agents are also conducting those searches far more frequently compared to previous years.