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Privacy Law

University of Michigan Law School

United States v. Jones

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Spies In The Skies: Dirtboxes And Airplane Electronic Surveillance, Brian L. Owsley Apr 2015

Spies In The Skies: Dirtboxes And Airplane Electronic Surveillance, Brian L. Owsley

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Electronic surveillance in the digital age is essentially a cat-and-mouse game between governmental agencies that are developing new techniques and technologies for surveillance, juxtaposed against privacy rights advocates who voice concerns about such technologies. In November 2014, there was a discovery of a new twist on a relatively old theme. Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Marshals Service was running a surveillance program employing devices—dirtboxes—that gather all cell phone numbers in the surrounding area. Other federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency, Immigration and Custom Enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security, are also documented to have …


Supreme Court Jurisprudence Of The Personal In City Of Los Angeles V. Patel, Brian L. Owsley Jan 2015

Supreme Court Jurisprudence Of The Personal In City Of Los Angeles V. Patel, Brian L. Owsley

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Recently, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in City of Los Angeles v. Patel striking down a city ordinance that required hotel and motel owners to make their guest registries available to police officers whenever requested to do so. Although the Court’s opinion in Patel simply affirmed the Ninth Circuit’s finding that the ordinance was unconstitutional, the Court could have used Patel to readdress the third-party doctrine, which establishes that “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Patel provided a vehicle for the Court to do so, particularly because …


The Court Loses Its Way With The Global Positioning System: United States V. Jones Retreats To The “Classic Trespassory Search”, George M. Dery Iii, Ryan Evaro Dec 2013

The Court Loses Its Way With The Global Positioning System: United States V. Jones Retreats To The “Classic Trespassory Search”, George M. Dery Iii, Ryan Evaro

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article analyzes United States v. Jones, in which the Supreme Court considered whether government placement of a global positioning system (GPS) device on a vehicle to follow a person’s movements constituted a Fourth Amendment “search.” The Jones Court ruled that two distinct definitions existed for a Fourth Amendment “search.” In addition to Katz v. United States’s reasonable-expectation-of-privacy standard, which the Court had used exclusively for over four decades, the Court recognized a second kind of search that it called a “classic trespassory search.” The second kind of search occurs when officials physically trespass or intrude upon a constitutionally protected …


The Politics Of Privacy In The Criminal Justice System: Information Disclosure, The Fourth Amendment, And Statutory Law Enforcement Exemptions, Erin Murphy Feb 2013

The Politics Of Privacy In The Criminal Justice System: Information Disclosure, The Fourth Amendment, And Statutory Law Enforcement Exemptions, Erin Murphy

Michigan Law Review

When criminal justice scholars think of privacy, they think of the Fourth Amendment. But lately its domain has become far less absolute. The United States Code currently contains over twenty separate statutes that restrict both the acquisition and release of covered information. Largely enacted in the latter part of the twentieth century, these statutes address matters vital to modern existence. They control police access to driver's licenses, educational records, health histories, telephone calls, email messages, and even video rentals. They conform to no common template, but rather enlist a variety of procedural tools to serve as safeguards - ranging from …