Evidence Commons^™

Reasonable Expectations Of Privacy Settings: Social Media And The Stored Communications Act, Christopher J. Borchert, Fernando M. Pinguelo, David Thaw

Duke Law & Technology Review

In 1986, Congress passed the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) to provide additional protections for individuals’ private communications content held in electronic storage by third parties. Acting out of direct concern for the implications of the Third-Party Records Doctrine—a judicially created doctrine that generally eliminates Fourth Amendment protections for information entrusted to third parties—Congress sought to tailor the SCA to electronic communications sent via and stored by third parties. Yet, because Congress crafted the SCA with language specific to the technology of 1986, courts today have struggled to apply the SCA consistently with regard to similar private content sent using different …