Fourth Amendment Commons^™

Unshielded: How The Police Can Become Touchable, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

This Review proceeds in three Parts. First, Part I examines Shielded’s text, highlighting Schwartz’s analysis of the problem of unaccountable police, the many barriers to holding police accountable, and her proposed solutions. Part II then critically examines Schwartz’s work, examining pieces of the problem she left undiscussed and the relative shortcomings of her discussion of possible solutions. Finally, Part III takes an abolitionist approach, delving into potential nonreformist reforms and the solution of full abolition, as well as examining the most significant objection to abolitionist approaches: the problem of violence.

A Miscarriage Of Justice: How Femtech Apps And Fog Data Evade Fourth Amendment Privacy Protections, Rachel Silver

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

After the fall of Roe v. Wade, states across the country have enacted extreme abortion bans. Anti-abortion states, emboldened by their new, unrestricted power to regulate women’s bodies, are only broadening the scope of abortion prosecutions. And modern technology provides law enforcement with unprecedented access to women’s most intimate information, including, for example, their menstrual cycle, weight, body temperature, sexual activity, mood, medications, and pregnancy details. Fourth Amendment law fails to protect this sensitive information stored on femtech apps from government searches. In a largely unregulated private market, femtech apps sell health and location data to third parties like Fog …

How To Punish Your Least Favorite Online Influencer: Wellness Checks As Swatting And Their Disproportionate Impact On Marginalized Creators, Tara Blackwell

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Marginalized online creators are vulnerable to attacks using digital means of harassment including traditional swatting as well as the abuse of wellness checks that can act as swatting. Enabled by permissive Supreme Court 4th Amendment jurisprudence, malignant online actors have taken advantage of the ramshackle system of wellness checks that sends armed police officers with little training and even less compassion to the doors of individuals with reported mental health crises. This Note focuses on two polarizing influencers who have been subject to wellness check swatting after being very open about their mental health statuses online. This Note argues that …

Stay Out Of My Head: Neurodata, Privacy, And The First Amendment, Wayne Unger

Washington and Lee Law Review

The once science-fictional idea of mind-reading is within reach as advancements in brain-computer interfaces, coupled with advanced artificial intelligence, produce neurodata—the collection of substantive thoughts as storable and processable data. But government access to individuals’ neurodata threatens personal autonomy and the right to privacy. While the Fourth Amendment is traditionally considered the source of privacy protections against government intrusion, the First Amendment provides more robust protections with respect to whether governments can access one’s substantive ideas, thoughts, and beliefs. However, many theorists assert that the concept of privacy conflicts with the First Amendment because privacy restricts the flow of information …

The Black Fourth Amendment, Charisma Hunter

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Policing Black bodies serves at the forefront of the American policing system. Black bodies are subject to everlasting surveillance through institutions and everyday occurrences. From relaxing in a Starbucks to exercising, Black bodies are deemed criminals, surveilled, profiled, and subjected to perpetual implicit bias when participating in mundane activities. Black people should have the same protections as white people and should possess the ability to engage in everyday, commonplace, and routine activities.

The Fourth Amendment was not drafted with the intention of protecting Black bodies. In fact, Black bodies were considered three-fifths of a person at the drafting of the …

High Time For Change: The Legalization Of Marijuana And Its Impact On Warrantless Roadside Motor Vehicle Searches, Molly E. O'Connell

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The proliferation of marijuana legalization has changed the relationship between driving and marijuana use. While impaired driving remains illegal, marijuana use that does not result in impairment is not a bar to operating a motor vehicle. Scientists have yet to find a reliable way for law enforcement officers to make this distinction. In the marijuana impairment context, there is not a scientifically proven equivalent to the Blood Alcohol Content standard nor are there reliable roadside assessments. This scientific and technological void has problematic consequences for marijuana users that get behind the wheel and find themselves suspected of impaired driving. Without …

It Just Makes Sense: An Argument For A Uniform Objective Standard For Incarcerated Individuals Bringing Claims Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Pearce Thomson Embrey

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In July 2020, the New York Times published an article on a Department of Justice report detailing the systematic abuse of incarcerated individuals by prison guards within the State of Alabama’s Department of Corrections. This report evidences the challenges faced by incarcerated individuals seeking to vindicate their Eighth Amendment rights. In a legal sense, those individuals who turn to the court system for relief face an almost insurmountable burden of proof. This Note begins by surveying the history of excessive force claims under the Fourth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as deliberate indifference claims under the Eighth and Fourteenth …

The Computer Got It Wrong: Facial Recognition Technology And Establishing Probable Cause To Arrest, T.J. Benedict

Washington and Lee Law Review

Facial recognition technology (FRT) is a popular tool among police, who use it to identify suspects using photographs or still-images from videos. The technology is far from perfect. Recent studies highlight that many FRT systems are less effective at identifying people of color, women, older people, and children. These race, gender, and age biases arise because FRT is often “trained” using non-diverse faces. As a result, police have wrongfully arrested Black men based on mistaken FRT identifications. This Note explores the intersection of facial recognition technology and probable cause to arrest.

Courts rarely, if ever, examine FRT’s role in establishing …

Who Can Protect Black Protest?, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

Police violence both as the cause of and response to the racial justice protests following George Floyd’s murder called fresh attention to the need for legal remedies to hold police officers accountable. In addition to the well-publicized issue of qualified immunity, the differential regimes for asserting civil rights claims against state and federal agents for constitutional rights violations create a further barrier to relief. Courts have only recognized damages as a remedy for such abuses in limited contexts against federal employees under the Bivens framework. The history of Black protest movements reveals the violent responses police have to such challenges …

Antiracism In Action, Daniel Harawa, Brandon Hasbrouck

Washington and Lee Law Review

Racism pervades the criminal legal system, influencing everything from who police stop and search, to who prosecutors charge, to what punishments courts apply. The Supreme Court’s fixation on colorblind application of the Constitution gives judges license to disregard the role race plays in the criminal legal system, and all too often, they do. Yet Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory challenges the facially race-neutral reasoning of criminal justice actors, often applying ostensibly colorblind scrutiny to achieve a color-conscious jurisprudence. Nor is he afraid of engaging directly in a frank discussion of the racial realities of America, rebuking those within the system …

The Unconstitutional Police, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

Most Fourth Amendment cases arise under a basic fact pattern. Police decide to do something--say, stop and frisk a suspect. They find some crime--say, a gun or drugs--they arrest the suspect, and the suspect is subsequently charged with a crime. The suspect--who is all too often Black--becomes a defendant and challenges the police officers' initial decision as unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The defendant seeks to suppress the evidence against them or perhaps to recover damages for serious injuries under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The courts subsequently constitutionalize the police officers' initial decision with little or no scrutiny. Effectively, the …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Professors Katherine Mims Crocker And Brandon Hasbrouck In Support Of Neither Party With Respect To Defendant's Motion To Dismiss: Dyer V. Smith, Brandon Hasbrouck, Katherine Mims Crocker

Scholarly Articles

This case illustrates how the First Amendment functions as an essential backstop to Fourth Amendment freedoms—and vice versa. As revealed by the national response to the killing of George Floyd and so many similar injustices, the ability to record encounters with government representatives is critical to preserving civil rights, and especially the right to avoid excessive force. The public only “became aware of the circumstances surrounding George Floyd’s death because citizens standing on a sidewalk exercised their First Amendment rights and filmed a police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck until he died.” Index Newspapers LLC v. U.S. Marshals Serv., …

Gps Tracking At The Border: A Mistaken Expectation Or A Chilling Reality, Kimberly Shi

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In 2018, Matthew C. Allen, the Assistant Director for the Domestic Operations Division within the United States Department of Homeland Security, filed a declaration in United States v. Ignjatov describing a departmental policy allowing for the installation of a “GPS tracking device on a vehicle at the United States border without a warrant or individualized suspicion,” limited “to 48 hours.” While the Border Search Doctrine, which predates the Fourth Amendment, deems that no warrant is necessary at the border for most searches and seizures because of the government’s inherent power to control who or what comes within a nation’s borders, …

Keeping The Zombies At Bay: Fourth Amendment Problems In The Fight Against Botnets, Danielle Potter

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

You may not have heard of a botnet. If you have, you may have linked it to election shenanigans and nothing else. But if you are reading this on a computer or smartphone, there is a good chance you are in contact with a botnet right now.

Botnets, sometimes called “Zombie Armies,” are networks of devices linked by a computer virus and controlled by cybercriminals. Botnets operate on everyday devices owned by millions of Americans, and thus pose a substantial threat to individual device owners as well as the nation’s institutions and economy.

Accordingly, the United States government has been …

Limited Privacy In “Pings:” Why Law Enforcement’S Use Of Cell-Site Simulators Does Not Categorically Violate The Fourth Amendment, Lara M. Mcmahon

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note proposes four factors courts should consider when asked to determine whether law enforcement’s use of a cell-site simulator constituted a Fourth Amendment search. The first asks courts to consider whether the cell-site simulator surveillance infringed on a constitutionally protected area, such as the home. The second asks courts to consider the duration of the cell-site simulator surveillance. The third asks courts to consider whether the cell-site simulator surveillance was conducted actively or passively. The fourth asks courts to focus on the nature and depth of the information obtained as a result of the cell-site simulator surveillance. If, after …

Text Messages Are Property: Why You Don’T Own Your Text Messages, But It’D Be A Lot Cooler If You Did, Spence M. Howden

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note proceeds as follows: Part II offers a brief overview of what text messages are and what they are not. Part III covers the history of intangible personal property law and reviews the evolution of “cybertrespass” claims. Part IV explores the judiciary and the Fourth Amendment’s failure to protect text messages. Finally, Part V evaluates whether text messages constitute property and the practical implications of this finding.

Out Of The “Serbonian Bog”1 Surrounding Government Acquisition Of Third-Party Cell Site Location Information: “Get A Warrant” †, Glenn Williams

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Chilling: The Constitutional Implications Of Body-Worn Cameras And Facial Recognition Technology At Public Protests, Julian R. Murphy

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In recent years body-worn cameras have been championed by community groups, scholars, and the courts as a potential check on police misconduct. Such has been the enthusiasm for body-worn cameras that, in a relatively short time, they have been rolled out to police departments across the country. Perhaps because of the optimism surrounding these devices there has been little consideration of the Fourth Amendment issues they pose, especially when they are coupled with facial recognition technology (FRT). There is one particular context in which police use of FRT equipped body-worn cameras is especially concerning: public protests. This Comment constitutes the …

Cybersurveillance Intrusions And An Evolving Katz Privacy Test, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

To contextualize why a new approach to the Fourth Amendment is essential, this Article describes two emerging cybersurveillance tools. The first Cybersurveillance tool, Geofeedia, has been deployed by state and local law enforcement. Geofeedia uses a process known as "geofencing" to draw a virtual barrier around a particular geographic region, and then identifies and tracks public social media posts within that region for predictive policing purposes. The second tool, Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), is under development by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). FAST is another predictive policing tool that analyzes physiological and behavioral signals with the …

Bulk Biometric Metadata Collection, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

Smart police body cameras and smart glasses worn by law enforcement increasingly reflect state-of-the-art surveillance technology, such as the integration of live-streaming video with facial recognition and artificial intelligence tools, including automated analytics. This Article explores how these emerging cybersurveillance technologies risk the potential for bulk biometric metadata collection. Such collection is likely to fall outside the scope of the types of bulk metadata collection protections regulated by the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015. The USA FREEDOM Act was intended to bring the practice of bulk telephony metadata collection conducted by the National Security Agency (“NSA”) under tighter regulation. In …

Orwell's 1984 And A Fourth Amendment Cybersurveillance Nonintrusion Test, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

This Article describes a cybersurveillance nonintrusion test under the Fourth Amendment that is grounded in evolving customary law to replace the reasonable expectation of privacy test formulated in Katz v. United States. To illustrate how customary law norms are shaping modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, this Article examines the recurrence of judicial references to George Orwell’s novel, 1984, within the Fourth Amendment context when federal courts have assessed the constitutionality of modern surveillance methods. The Supreme Court has indicated that the Fourth Amendment privacy doctrine must now evolve to impose meaningful limitations on the intrusiveness of new surveillance technologies.

A …

Commodifying Policing: A Recipe For Community-Police Tensions, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

This Article, in Part II, begins with a description of how municipalities, at least since the recession of 2008, have fallen short of fully funding their departments. Part III focuses on four distinct outside funding components and their impact on policing. The first subsection discusses asset forfeitures, under both state and federal law. Subsection two highlights revenue derived from citations, often in the form of traffic tickets. A discussion of fees that are being added to fines, often to fund courts, probation agencies, and police departments, follows. The increasing amounts and types of fees imposed have substantially increased the burden …

Biometric Cyberintelligence And The Posse Comitatus Act, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

This Article addresses the rapid growth of what the military and the intelligence community refer to as “biometric-enabled intelligence.” This newly emerging intelligence tool is reliant upon biometric databases—for example, digitalized storage of scanned fingerprints and irises, digital photographs for facial recognition technology, and DNA. This Article introduces the term “biometric cyberintelligence” to more accurately describe the manner in which this new tool is dependent upon cybersurveillance and big data’s massintegrative systems.

This Article argues that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, designed to limit the deployment of federal military resources in the service of domestic policies, will be difficult …

Brief Of Scholars Of The History And Original Meaning Of The Fourth Amendment As Amici Curiae In Support Of Petitioner: Carpenter V. United States, Margaret Hu

Scholarly Articles

Law enforcement officials wanted to learn where Petitioner Timothy Carpenter was at the time of certain robberies. To figure that out, they obtained records from his cellular service provider showing the movements of his cell phone. Examining those records, they were able to track Carpenter’s whereabouts over a four-month period. Obtaining and examining those records was a “search” in any normal sense of the word—a search of documents and a search for Carpenter and one of his personal effects. It was therefore a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. When the Amendment was ratified, to “search” meant to …

The Rhetoric Of The Fourth Amendment: Toward A More Persuasive Fourth Amendment, Timothy C. Macdonnell

Washington and Lee Law Review

In the last forty-five years, the United States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence through the lens of classical rhetoric. Opinions are assessed based on three areas of persuasion: appeals to logic (logos); appeals to emotion (pathos); and appeals to credibility (ethos). By examining the Justices’ opinions in this fashion, patterns of unpersuasive opinion writing emerge. While a common source for all unpersuasive opinions is not available, common patterns of weak persuasion in particular appeals do exist. Weak appeals to ethos commonly stem from Justices failing to fully confront the doctrine of stare decisis. Weak pathos-based appeals often involve Justices engaging in misplaced …

Birchfield V. North Dakota:Why The United States Supreme Court Should Rely On Riley V. California To Hold That Criminalizing A Suspect’S Refusal To Consent To A Warrantless Blood Test Violates The Fourth Amendment, Adam Lamparello, Cynthia Swann

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Taxonomy Of The Snowden Disclosures, Margaret Hu

Washington and Lee Law Review

This brief Essay offers a proposed taxonomy of the Snowden Disclosures. An informed discussion on the legality and constitutionality of the emerging cybersurveillance and mass dataveillance programs revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden necessitates the furtherance of cybersurveillance aptitude. This Essay contends, therefore, that a detailed examination of the Snowden disclosures requires not just a careful inquiry into the legal and constitutional framework that guides the oversight of these programs. A close interrogation also requires a careful inquiry into the big data architecture that guides them. This inquiry includes examining the underlying theories of data science and the rationales …

State Labs Of Federalism And Law Enforcement "Drone" Use, Chris Jenks

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Dangerous Dicta, David Gray

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Surveillance As Loss Of Obscurity, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.