The world's largest technology companies have united in a call for stronger online privacy laws that would prevent police from accessing people's emails and other information stored remotely without the need for a warrant.
Industry giants like Intel, Microsoft, Google and AT&T all backed the new group called the Digital Due Process Coalition that launched a campaign Wednesday to update the federal law dating from 1986, which set the standards for law enforcement access to electronic data - long before the widespread adoption of email, wireless networks or social networking.
"1986 was light-years away in internet terms, and it's now time to update the law," said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Centre for Democracy and Technology, a non-profit internet civil liberties group leading the push for the change.
The patchwork nature of the law means that officials need to get a warrant to search email that is less than 180 days old, but needs no special permit to access emails that are older than that, the organisation said.
Similarly, law enforcement officers are banned from accessing data stored on an individual hard drive but can freely access the same information the moment an individual stores it on a remote "cloud" server.
Digital Due Process, whose members also include the American Civil Liberties Union, wants to require police and other government agencies engaged in a criminal investigation to get a court order or search warrant before accessing any personal email or other data stored on an internet "cloud" service such as Google.
They also want limits on the ability of investigators to track a person's physical movements through their wireless phone network, monitor real-time text messages or instant message conversations; or make data "bulk requests" such as a list of everyone who visits a particular website.
The campaign took off just days after it was revealed that the Justice Department is coaching law enforcement officers on how to use Facebook and other social networking sites in order to gather information and evidence, including the use of false identities to gain the trust of potential targets.
Dempsey said the companies expect resistance from law enforcement officers who are already struggling to deal with the Internet's ability to aid criminals, but that they want to have a dialogue about the proposals.
"We're looking for a compromise," he said on a conference call with reporters, adding that law enforcement agencies would also get a benefit from updating the law. "On some of these issues, (police) are constitutionally vulnerable. They run the risk of losing cases when the courts start ruling on constitutional grounds."
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