under ecpa -- and this is the problem we are pointing out -- ecpa as it is now written says that government agencies do not need award in the ordinary criminal cases of the kind that richard has talked about and in other non national security cases. if anything -- people often think the national security standards are more favorable to the government because of unique interest at stake on the national security side, in fact here the privacy protection standards are weaker in the ordinary run-of-the-mill crawl investigations. now, it is hard to -- for many of you to appreciate to my take, how far we have come in technology since 1986 when the electronic communications privacy act was first enacted. in 1986 it was what -- it was a dial up world. he used to dial in through a telephone line to your internet service provider and down load your e-mail on to your laptop at which point that would be deleted from the server. now, of course, fast forward to 2014 and we are in a world that is characterized by always-on technology, ubiquitous broadband wireless and the emergence of what we call the clo

to these things and that we will, you know, senator leahy, chairman leahy has written a lot of the ecpa laws in the past, and i think and hope we'll get to this. >> host: and finally, senator franken, what's the next step with regard to the comcast/time warner cable proposed merger with regard to senate judiciary committee? >> guest: i don't know. i'd like to see us do more hearings, but we'll see. >> host: and have you shared your views with doj and the fcc at this point? >> guest: yes, we have. we've been as soon -- as soon as proposed deal was announced, i wrote to both doj and the fcc to express my concerns, and i've had a running correspondence with them. >> host: senator al franken, democrat of minnesota and a member of the senate judiciary committee. thanks for join ising us on "the communicators," sir. >> guest: thank you. >> host: and tony romm of politico, what did you hear from senator franken will specifically about comcast? >> guest: sure. it's not over is what we heard. not just because senator franken wants another hearing, but because there are actually ore hearings stil

in terms of the update of ecpa if we took away the content rule that would be durable.currently it is not doable. much we could fix that. location tracking with more effort we could fix and that would be durable. down the road there may be new technology to access that we don't anticipate now but what the courts are grappling with with no pending legislation is the issue of you did to with the front page of the "washington post" that goes to the scope of the warrant. even if you have one the authority said digital environment vastly broaden his the scope of that search now going to the third-party service provider or a person's hand held the vice you can get far more information van with a traditional physical world search. grappling with a question how to read narrow with the execution of the warrant in the digital world? how to be extended to them and where you have third-party providers who bears the burden? who is responsible for sorting through the vast amount of data that may include your relevant personal data not relevant to to the investigation there will be a