Law Commons^™

The Automated Fourth Amendment, Maneka Sinha

Faculty Scholarship

Courts routinely defer to police officer judgments in reasonable suspicion and probable cause determinations. Increasingly, though, police officers outsource these threshold judgments to new forms of technology that purport to predict and detect crime and identify those responsible. These policing technologies automate core police determinations about whether crime is occurring and who is responsible. Criminal procedure doctrine has failed to insist on some level of scrutiny of—or skepticism about—the reliability of this technology. Through an original study analyzing numerous state and federal court opinions, this Article exposes the implications of law enforcement’s reliance on these practices given the weighty interests …

The Fourth Amendment Inventory As A Check On Digital Searches, Laurent Sacharoff

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Police and federal agents generally must obtain a warrant to search the tens of thousands of devices they seize each year. But once they have a warrant, courts afford these officers broad leeway to search the entire device, every file and folder, all metadata and deleted data, even if in search of only one incriminating file. Courts avow great reverence for the privacy of personal information under the Fourth Amendment but then claim there is no way to limit where an officer might find the target files, or know where the suspect may have hidden them.

These courts have a …

Catching Killers With Consumer Genetic Information, Angela Hackstadt

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

In April 2018, Joseph James D'Angelo was arrested as a suspect in the Golden State Killer case. DNA evidence collected at a 1980 crime scene finally shed light on the murderer's identity in early 2018 when investigators turned to GEDMatch, a service that allows users to upload and share DNA data obtained from consumer genetic tests. Consumer genetic testing, DNA collection, and familial DNA searching all raise ethical and privacy concerns. If investigators are using genetic genealogy to solve cold cases, where does that leave consumers?

Privacy And Security Across Borders, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Three recent initiatives -by the United States, European Union, and Australiaare opening salvos in what will likely be an ongoing and critically important debate about law enforcement access to data, the jurisdictional limits to such access, and the rules that apply. Each of these developments addresses a common set of challenges posed by the increased digitalization of information, the rising power of private companies delimiting access to that information, and the cross-border nature of investigations that involve digital evidence. And each has profound implications for privacy, security, and the possibility of meaningful democratic accountability and control. This Essay analyzes the …

Revenge Porn, Thomas Lonardo, Tricia P. Martland, Rhode Island Bar Journal

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Discovering Trump 06-22-2018, David A. Logan

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Microsoft Ireland, The Cloud Act, And International Lawmaking 2.0, Jennifer Daskal

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

On March 23, President Trump signed the CLOUD Act, 1 thereby mooting one of the most closely watched Supreme Court cases this term: the Microsoft Ireland case. 2 This essay examines these extraordinary and fast-moving developments, explaining how the Act resolves the Supreme Court case and addresses the complicated questions of jurisdiction over data in the cloud. The developments represent a classic case of international lawmaking via domestic regulation, as mediated by major multinational corporations that manage so much of the world's data.

Why New Hampshire Must Update Rape Shield Laws, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] “Recent research indicates that New Hampshire has some of the highest rates of sexual assault in the nation; nearly one in four New Hampshire women and one in 20 New Hampshire men will experience sexual assault. Although reporting a crime can be hard for anyone, sexual assault victims have particular reasons for not reporting. After an assault, a rape victim typically feels embarrassment, shame and fears reprisal (most of these crimes are committed by an acquaintance). The deeply personal nature of rape makes it uniquely traumatizing and confusing.”

Newsroom: Goldstein On Drug Databases 6-27-2016, Sheri Qualters, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Privacy, Public Disclosure, Police Body Cameras: Policy Splits, Mary D. Fan

Articles

When you call the police for help—or someone calls the police on you—do you bear the risk that your worst moments will be posted on YouTube for public viewing? Police officers enter some of the most intimate incidences of our lives—after an assault, when we are drunk and disorderly, when someone we love dies in an accident, when we are distraught, enraged, fighting, and more. As police officers around the nation begin wearing body cameras in response to calls for greater transparency, communities are wrestling with how to balance privacy with public disclosure.

This Article sheds light on the balances …

Riley V. California And The Beginning Of The End For The Third-Party Search Doctrine, David A. Harris

Articles

In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court decided that when police officers seize a smart phone, they may not search through its contents -- the data found by looking into the call records, calendars, pictures and so forth in the phone -- without a warrant. In the course of the decision, the Court said that the rule applied not just to data that was physically stored on the device, but also to data stored "in the cloud" -- in remote sites -- but accessed through the device. This piece of the decision may, at last, allow a re-examination of …

Neuroprediction: New Technology, Old Problems, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

Neuroprediction is the use of structural or functional brain or nervous system variables to make any type of prediction, including medical prognoses and behavioral forecasts, such as an indicator of future dangerous behavior. This commentary will focus on behavioral predictions, but the analysis applies to any context. The general thesis is that using neurovariables for prediction is a new technology, but that it raises no new ethical issues, at least for now. Only if neuroscience achieves the ability to “read” mental content will genuinely new ethical issues be raised, but that is not possible at present.

The Sky Is The Limit: Regulating The Next Generation Of Privacy Invasion, Laura Patty

GGU Law Review Blog

No abstract provided.

A Fourth Amendment Theory For Arrestee Dna And Other Biometric Databases, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

Routine DNA sampling following a custodial arrest process is now the norm in many jurisdictions, but is it consistent with the Fourth Amendment? The few courts that have addressed the question have disagreed on the answer, but all of them seem to agree on two points: (1) the reasonableness of the practice turns on a direct form of balancing of individual and governmental interests; and (2) individuals who are convicted — and even those who are merely arrested — have a greatly diminished expectation of privacy in their identities. This Article disputes these propositions and offers an improved framework for …

A Parent's "Apparent" Authority: Why Intergenerational Coresidence Requires A Reassessment Of Parental Consent To Search Adult Children's Bedrooms, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

The proliferation of multigenerational U.S. households provides a new perspective on the social customs and practices concerning coresidence in the United States. Rather than relying outdated presumptions of parental control, this Article argues that police should be compelled to conduct a more thorough inquiry before searching areas occupied exclusively by the adult child. Police should differentiate between "common" and private areas, and inquire into any agreements - formal or informal - that the parent and child may have regarding access and control over such areas. By fully recognizing the changing nature of the American household and rejecting a bare reliance …

Please, Let's Bury The Junk: The Codis Loci And The Revelation Of Private Information, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

This Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy paper describes the four possible ways in which genetic loci could possess predictive or diagnostic value with regard to diseases and explains why these mechanisms have not led, and probably cannot lead, to useful screening tests with the Convicted Offender DNA Index System (CODIS) profiles in national, state, and local databases. It then considers the phenotypes and familial relationships that the CODIS STRs can be used to identify. The profiles carry limited information about an individual's race and familial relationships, and the article places the resulting privacy issues in perspective. Finally, the paper comments …

Confidentiality In Arbitration: Beyond The Myth, Richard C. Reuben

Faculty Publications

Many people assume that arbitration is private and confidential. But is that assumption accurate? This article is the first to explore that question in the important context of whether arbitration communications can be discovered and admitted into evidence in other legal proceedings - a question that is just beginning to show up in the cases. It first surveys the federal and state statutory and case law, finding that arbitration communications in fact are generally discoverable and admissible. It then considers the normative desirability of discovering and admitting arbitration communications evidence, concluding that the free discovery and admissibility of arbitration communications …

Two Fallacies About Dna Data Banks For Law Enforcement, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

This commentary on the article Legal and Policy Issues in Expanding the Scope of Law Enforcement DNA Data Banks, 67 Brook. L. Rev. 127 (2001), by Mark Rothstein and Sandra Carnahan, argues that the case for confining law enforcement DNA databases to noncoding loci and to samples from individuals convicted of violent crimes is quite weak.

It describes alternative approaches, including the possibility of a population-wide database; the privacy implications of the loci now used in forensic identification; the law governing DNA dragnets; and the limits on DNA databases imposed by recent cases on searches and seizures. It notes the …

The Constitutionality Of Dna Sampling On Arrest, David H. Kaye

Journal Articles

Every state now collects DNA from people convicted of certain offenses. Law enforcement authorities promote offender DNA databanking on the theory that it will identify offenders who commit additional crimes while or probation or parole, or after they have finished serving their sentences. Even relatively small databases have yielded such dividends. As these database searches uncover the perpetrators of rapes, murders, and other offenses, the pressure builds to expand the coverage of the databases.

Recent proposals call for extending not merely the scope of crimes for which DNA databanking would be used, but also the point at which the samples …

The Federal Psychotherapist-Patient Privilege After Jaffee: Truth And Other Values In A Therapeutic Age, Christopher B. Mueller

Publications

No abstract provided.

Capacity To Contest A Search And Seizure: The Passing Of Old Rules And Some Suggestions For New Ones, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professor Slobogin examines recent Supreme Court decisions involving standing to challenge search and seizure violations, and argues that the Court's commitment to a "totality of the circumstances" approach has permitted erosion of fourth amendment protections. After concluding that these decisions provide little guidance to lower courts, Professor Slobogin offers a set of principles which will aid in analyzing the Court's direction.

The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination In Civil Commitment Proceedings, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.