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Criminal Procedure Commons

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Selected Works

Fourth Amendment

Susan Freiwald

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Criminal Procedure

The Davis Good Faith Rule And Getting Answers To The Questions Jones Left Open, Susan Freiwald Dec 2012

The Davis Good Faith Rule And Getting Answers To The Questions Jones Left Open, Susan Freiwald

Susan Freiwald

The Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Jones clearly established that use of GPS tracking surveillance constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. But the Court left many other questions unanswered about the nature and scope of the constitutional privacy right in location data. A review of lower court decisions in the wake of Jones reveals that, rather than begin to answer the questions that Jones left open, courts are largely avoiding substantive Fourth Amendment analysis of location data privacy. Instead, they are finding that officers who engaged in GPS tracking and related surveillance operated in good faith, based …


Cell Phone Location Data And The Fourth Amendment: A Question Of Law, Not Fact, Susan Freiwald Dec 2010

Cell Phone Location Data And The Fourth Amendment: A Question Of Law, Not Fact, Susan Freiwald

Susan Freiwald

In a significant ruling in the fall of 2010, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the government’s claim that it could compel cell phone service providers to disclose customer records that indicate the cell towers with which a cell phone has communicated (cell phone location information or CSLI) without obtaining a warrant based on probable cause. In a break with past decisions, the court rejected application of a “third party rule,” under which cell phone users are seen to assume the risk that their providers will disclose location data without the protections of a warrant requirement. The court, however, …