It was just a few weeks ago that Leahy was being viewed as a champion of personal privacy as he pushed for the inclusion of legislative provisions that would require government agents to obtain a search warrant before monitoring email communications between private citizens. However, following discussion with law enforcement and intelligence community leaders, it seems as though Leahy has reversed course.

Citing sources with personal knowledge of the proposed revisions, CNET suggested that the latest draft would give nearly two dozen federal agencies - including the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Communications Commission - expanded power to access private email accounts, Facebook posts, Twitter messages and files hosted in public cloud environments.

Consumer privacy advocates were predictably dismayed by this turn of events, viewing it as a potentially dramatic setback to productive conversations that have taken place in recent months. According to CNET, some even feared that such a bill could hinder cloud computing adoption rates if citizens view personal, solid state storage drives as the only viable means of protecting sensitive data from prying eyes.

Leahy's team responds
These reports were only on the web for a matter of hours before Congressional aides caught wind of the controversy and attempted to bring an end to the confusion.

According to The Hill, Senate Judiciary Committee staffers have already come forward to deny allegations that Leahy was advocating for the inclusion of a warrantless search clause. Instead, they suggested that the news may have stemmed from a misguided interpretation of ideas discussed in a preliminary brainstorming session.

Whatever the case may be, it seems inevitable that current statutes will need to be amended to reflect modern day cyber security realities. With the majority of existing regulation in this area still tracing directly to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act passed in 1986, both government actors and private sector stakeholders realize that responsible reforms must be passed sooner than later.