A revamp to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act will help set policy around new technology that the creators of that law didn't imagine, panelists said during a cybercrime conference hosted by the University of Washington's School of Law on Friday.

The act was written long before current email systems were devised. "In 1986, no one thought email would be stored indefinitely, so the statute says that 180-day-old email is stale and therefore not in need of protection," explained Sharon Nelson, formerly the director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce and Technology at the University of Washington School of Law.

That means law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to access emails from 180 days ago, or emails and other data stored in the cloud, experts said.

Law enforcement and privacy advocates disagree on exactly how the law should be updated to accommodate data saved in the cloud.

Groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology want law enforcement to be required to get a warrant in order to access information stored in the cloud. Companies including Google and Microsoft are also backing this idea; they're part of a group called Digital Due Process working for changes in the ECPA.