Dive Brief:

• Tech industry companies including Amazon, IBM, Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Google sent a letter to Senate members Tuesday, urging them to approve the current version of the email privacy bill.

• The letter, signed by almost 70 different tech companies, asked the Senate to approve the legislation without changes to avoid weakening the bill. 

• The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to vote on any reforms Thursday. The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed the Email Privacy Act in April with a vote of 419-0.

Dive Insight:

There are minor differences between the House and Senate bills. Supporters of the bill are pushing for passage of identical bills in the House and Senate because it would make the process of turning the legislation into law easier.

"We support H.R.699 and urge the Committee to pass it immediately and without any amendments that would weaken the protections afforded by the bill," the letter states.

The law would require law enforcement authorities to get a search warrant before asking technology companies to hand over emails more than 180 days old. Currently, agencies only need a subpoena to seek such data from a service provider.

Privacy advocates and tech companies have pushed for legislation for years. The Email Privacy Act would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was written before cloud computing became widely used.