Congress should not water down the e-mail privacy bill.

Twenty-nine years ago, Ronald Reagan was president, Lionel Ritchie was singing “Say You, Say Me,” and e-mail was not a main source of communication as it is today.

But that is when the poorly named Electronic Communications Privacy Act passed Congress with a gaping loophole that allowed federal officials to seize any e-mail older than 180 days with little more than a request to Internet providers.

Who could have foreseen the creation of cloud storage that lets people keep e-mails indefinitely?

Thankfully, Congress appears close to updating the woefully archaic law, requiring a probablecause warrant whenever the government or law enforcement agencies want access to online messages.

Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., have introduced the Email Privacy Act to amend the ECPA and prohibit providers from “knowingly divulging” electronic communications to any governmental entity without a warrant.

H.R. 699 has 292 co-sponsors, which Polis says is the most popular legislation in Congress that hasn’t gotten a floor vote. Why is that? A clue came this month during testimony on the Senate’s companion bill. An official from the Federal Trade Commission said the agency is “concerned that recent proposals could impede” the ability to obtain “certain information” from Internet companies, according to The Washington Post.

The official suggested a series of “carve-outs” for civil agencies like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to be able to get special court orders to allow them to look at someone’s private e-mail.

Such carve-outs would substantially weaken legislation that lawmakers, technology experts and industry groups widely support.

Why should e-mail be afforded less privacy than snail mail? The government should step into the modern era, curtail its snooping and realize that Americans deserve privacy in their electronic messages as they would in any other form.