CDT – “Today’s Transparency Report from Google, which shows a sharp increase in government demands for user data, provides the latest in a long list of reasons why Congress should act now to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), to make it clear that government officials must obtain a warrant in order to access email and other communications stored online. According to the report, law enforcement agencies in the US served over ten thousand demands on Google for customers’ data in the first half of 2013, an increase of nearly 30% over the previous six months and a 47% increase in the number of accounts affected. Since 2009, demands from US law enforcement agencies to Google have grown by over 200%, double the global rate.”