In May, Texas passed a law that requires authorities to get a warrant based on probable cause before accessing any email, including those older than six months. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the federal law that regulates email privacy, only requires warrants for unopened emails younger than 180 days. Lawmakers have struggled for more than a year to pass a reform on the law, which critics say is outdated.
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Before Edward Snowden put privacy and surveillance in the headlines, Daniel Zolnikov, a 26-year old Montana representative, passed the very first law in April requiring cops to obtain a warrant in order to access cellphone location data.
The law, which the American Civil Liberties Union called "historic," started a trend. Maine and the New Jersey Supreme Court passed similar bills in July.
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This year, states started clamping down on revenge porn, the lewd practice of people posting their ex's naked pictures online as payback after a break up.
California and New Jersey were the first states to ban revenge porn, making it illegal to distribute intimate pictures or videos of a person without his or her consent.
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In what is perhaps the most controversial legal change of the year, unlocking cellphones, which lets users to switch carriers without buying a new device, became illegal in January.
Since then, there's been a lot of public outrage (including a massive White House online petition), but little has changed -- you're still breaking the law if you unlock your phone.
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Clicking “Like” on a Facebook post has been a way of expressing opinion for years, but there's been a big debate in legal circles as to whether Liking something on Facebook was worthy of First Amendment protection. In September, a federal appeals court judge ruled that, indeed, the U.S. Constitution protects your Like, a ruling that could set a precedent for future cases.
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After years of complaints, travelers can finally use their gadgets at all times during a flight, including takeoff and landing. The FAA lifted the ban in October after months of recommendations and proposals. Just a few weeks later, the Federal Communications Commission submitted a proposal to allow in-flight cellphone calls. However, not everyone is on board.
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We've all had our fair share of embarrassing social media posts. For California teens under 18, removing those posts is now a little easier. The Golden State passed a law in September requiring websites to remove content at the request of a minor. The law, however, doesn't require sites to remove content submitted by third parties. So if someone else posted the embarrassing picture, the minor is out of luck.
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While 2013 will be remembered as the year of the NSA leaks, privacy was already a hot topic for lawmakers around the country before Edward Snowden exposed top-secret surveillance programs.
U.S. states like Montana, Maine and Texas have all passed laws extending constitutional protections for various types of data. Most did it before Snowden's revelations put digital privacy at the forefront of American's public discourse.
See also: 14 Illegal Things You're Doing on the Internet
However, despite progress in certain states and international outrage over the NSA scandal, federal legislators haven't followed suit. In fact, perhaps the biggest news of the year is that Congress has been unable to pass any privacy-protecting legislations.
We collected these legislations and other landmark laws and legal decisions of the year, from revenge porn to in-flight gadget use during takeoffs and landings.
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