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Electronic Communications Privacy Act
Weeks 5 & 6
Weeks 5 & 6 (Oct. 23 & Nov. 1, 2023): Electronic Communications Privacy Act
As with the CFAA, we will spend two weeks on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) due to its complexity. ECPA is a statutory regime governing Americans' digital privacy; it generally forbids private citizens from snooping on each other (such as eavesdropping on someone else's phone calls or intercepting their emails). ECPA also sets forth the rules for the government to engage in that same conduct (phone tapping, etc.) for surveillance and evidence-gathering purposes in criminal investigations. Our study of ECPA will focus on one part of ECPA called the Wiretap Act. We'll study how the Wiretap Act has been invoked in cases involving Wi-Fi "sniffing" (Week 5) and HTTP requests (Week 6).
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