Sponsors (9)
The bill modernizes and clarifies who can access and disclose stored electronic communications and creates clearer warrant procedures—improving predictability and law‑enforcement access—but it reduces certain privacy protections and broadens who must comply, increasing risks of data disclosure and compliance costs.
Providers and users: the bill modernizes and clarifies statutory language and who may lawfully disclose stored communications, reducing ambiguity and likely lowering litigation risk for providers and making access/consent practices more predictable for account holders.
Law enforcement: the bill makes it clearer that warrants can be applied to both electronic-communication and remote-computing service providers, streamlining the legal basis for obtaining communications and related provider records.
Providers and users: courts must issue warrants and may set disclosure deadlines, creating clearer legal process and predictable timelines for providers responding to orders.
Subscribers and customers: the bill reduces a prior privacy protection (the former 180‑day limitation), increasing government access to stored communications and meaningfully lowering privacy for many users.
Subscribers and customers: broadening storage language (e.g., 'stored, held, or maintained') expands the types and age of data providers may disclose, increasing the risk that long‑stored, backup, or archival communications become accessible.
Small and nontraditional providers (and their customers): replacing 'provider of' with broader wording and explicitly covering remote computing service providers expands who is covered, increasing compliance costs and administrative burdens that could raise costs for consumers and strain small businesses.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Modernizes the Stored Communications Act: clarifies storage language, expands covered providers, tightens warrant standards (removes 180‑day exception), and permits limited provider notice.
Official title: To amend title 18, United States Code, to update the privacy protections for electronic communications information that is stored by third-party service providers in order to protect consumer privacy interests while meeting law enforcement needs, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 22, 2026 by Suzan K. Delbene · Last progress May 22, 2026
Amends the Stored Communications Act to modernize language and change who can be compelled to disclose electronic communications and records. It replaces outdated terms, clarifies where communications are stored, expands the classes of providers covered, tightens warrant requirements for obtaining communications (removing the 180‑day exception), permits providers to notify customers about legal process subject to existing gag‑order rules, and preserves certain construction rules about provider‑employees and public communications. The changes mostly rewrite and clarify statutory text in 18 U.S.C. §§2702 and 2703 to reflect modern storage practices and provider roles, alter consent/recipient language, broaden which service providers can be compelled to disclose records, and adjust procedural rules for courts and government requests without adding new funding or deadlines.