A lot has changed in the last 24 years: Flat televisions, cell phones, tablets, computers, the internet, and much more. One thing that hasn’t: Communications Privacy Law. Back in 1986, the US instituted the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which protects the public from interception, access, and disclosure of communications data without legal warrant. Unfortunately governments have found a way to circumvent this law, by accessing data (notably email) that is stored on remote servers. But now a number of organizations are pressuring the government to update this law for digital data stored online.
Some of the groups involved in the movement include: The Electronic Freedom Foundation, the ACLU, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Center for Democracy and Technology, and others. They have kick-started a campaign called “Digital Due Process” which makes several suggestions:

• All “private content” held by a service provider should be protected by the same standard as material on your laptop: a warrant must be obtained. Currently, the rules are murky and confusing; the government can go after server e-mail older than 180 days, for instance, with only a subpoena (no judge needed), while more recent e-mail needs a warrant.
• Warrants must be sought to access location information. Currently, says the CDT, GPS data is protected by warrant, but other data (such as that from cell phones) is not. Courts have been “all over the ballpark” on this issue.
• For “transactional” data (i.e., data that might include e-mail headers but not message content), the coalition says that a judge should be involved, though a warrant may not be needed.
• Subpoenas should only be used where government has a particular person whose data they seek; they shouldn’t be used for bulk requests on many subscribers at once without a court order. (Source)

Here is a video released to promote the campaign: