Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, released a statement announcing the Email Privacy Act has been delayed after it was pulled from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s markup agenda. Lee points to an amendment added to the bill as the reason for the delay. “Unfortunately, some Senators on the committee have decided late in the day that this bill should be a vehicle to move an unrelated and controversial expansion of the use of national security letters by the FBI. Such an expansion would swallow up the protections this bill offers to the American people. While there are other concerns we had hoped to negotiate, the national security letter amendment is something I cannot in good conscience have attached to this bill,” Lee’s statement said. Lee said the bill will be held until “we can proceed without risking that this bill actually decrease[s] the privacy of our citizens.”
Full Story