By David Ruiz, from The Recorder

SAN FRANCISCO — Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill Thursday that will protect the digital information of California residents in much the same way that physical documents are already protected. Senate Bill 178, authored by Senators Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, will require law enforcement agencies to obtain a search warrant before going through a resident’s computer, cell phone, tablet or other tech device.

“For too long, California’s digital privacy laws have been stuck in the Dark Ages, leaving our personal emails, text messages, photos and smartphones increasingly vulnerable to warrantless searches,” said Senator Leno in a news release. The bill, titled the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, won a 39-0 approval vote in June, but Governor Brown had previously shot down two similar bills because of the limitations imposed on law enforcement agencies.

In response to opposition from some Republicans and police agencies, Senator Leno removed a few provisions from SB 178, including a requirement that law enforcement annually report the quantity and type of digital information sought. The bill also spells out exceptions when police are acting in an emergency. The new law requires police officers to obtain a search warrant before going through a California resident’s electronic information, including texts, emails, GPS data and photos stored on laptops, mobile phones or tablets. The bill applies to locally stored data, as well as anything stored in the cloud that is uploaded by a California resident.

The bill is co-sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of California.

Lee Tien, in-house counsel for Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the bill’s passage is the tool needed to actually change behavior. “We have the rule and we have the deterrents,” Tien said. “The combination of the right and remedy is the most important thing to actually get compliance.” Tien praised the work of Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director for the ACLU, saying that she did much of the difficult legwork in actually getting the bill to the governor’s desk.

“It’s easy for us, as civil liberties advocates, to talk about what’s ‘right,'” Tien said, “but when dealing with legislations and politics, you have to actually figure who you need to talk to, what they need to hear, how to make the arguments that need to be presented and how to find the people to back you up. It’s just like winning an election.”

The bill is also supported by some of the tech industry’s major players, including Google Inc., Twitter Inc. Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. Those companies have seen requests for their users’ information increase dramatically in the past year, according to a government news release. The release said that Twitter and Tumblr both received more law enforcement demands for user information in California than in any other state, and that Google witnessed a 180 percent increase in the number of law enforcement demands when compared to last year.

With the signing, California joins the ranks of Texas, Utah, Maine and Virginia, which each have their own protections for residents’ digital and electronic information.

IMAGE: Governor Jerry Brown Jason Doiy / The Recorder

For more on this story go to: http://www.therecorder.com/id=1202739488664/Search-Warrants-Required-for-Digital-Data#ixzz3oMYDAy90