Current privacy protections are inadequate. This law extends the very important guarantees contained within the 1968 wiretap statute to digital communication and stored electronic mail. But this protection now appears inadequate. ECPA also does not appear to protect critical personal information, such as a person's telephone number, from improper disclosure. Nonetheless, the service has been offered over the objection of consumer groups, technical experts, and legal scholars.
Technical safeguards provide only a partial solution.
There are some in the network community who believe that technology will provide a solution to these emerging privacy problems. New techniques in cryptography provide ways to protect the contents of an electronic message and even to protect the identity of the message author. CPSR has supported many efforts to improve technical means for privacy protection. In fact, CPSR has been of the leading proponents of the widespread us of cryptography to protect electronic communications. We have opposed restrictions by both the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the use of cryptography.