Amending the ECPA to Enable a Culture of Cybersecurity Research (Electronic Communications Privacy Act‪)‬

I. INTRODUCTION Computer and network security (together, "cybersecurity") have become matters of major economic, social, and national security importance. Computer networks have joined other systems like transportation, energy, defense, and health care that are critical to the functioning of the national economy. (1) Indeed, computer networks are the "nervous system" that ties together and controls these other components of our national infrastructure. (2) Increasingly sophisticated network attacks, however, constantly threaten this infrastructure and the activities that rely on it. These attacks do not simply damage an isolated machine, or disrupt an individual's or single enterprise's access to the Internet. Instead, modern attacks threaten to target infrastructure that is integral to the economy, national defense, and daily life. (3) Although society has benefited from innovative applications that connect people and devices via the Internet, (4) malicious parties have taken advantage of the Internet's connectivity by exploiting technological and human vulnerabilities to perpetrate attacks for personal, financial, and political gain. (5) The FBI estimated in 2005 that cybercrime costs the United States $67.2 billion annually. (6)