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A Solution For The Third-Party Doctrine In A Time Of Data Sharing, Contact Tracing, And Mass Surveillance, Tonja Jacobi, Dustin Stonecipher
A Solution For The Third-Party Doctrine In A Time Of Data Sharing, Contact Tracing, And Mass Surveillance, Tonja Jacobi, Dustin Stonecipher
Faculty Articles
Today, information is shared almost constantly. People share their DNA to track their ancestry or for individualized health information; they instruct Alexa to purchase products or provide directions; and, now more than ever, they use videoconferencing technology in their homes. According to the third-party doctrine, the government can access all such information without a warrant or without infringing on Fourth Amendment privacy protections. This exposure of vast amounts of highly personal data to government intrusion is permissible because the Supreme Court has interpreted the third-party doctrine as a per se rule. However, that interpretation rests on an improper understanding of …
The Corrosive Effect Of Inevitable Discovery On The Fourth Amendment, Tonja Jacobi, Elliot Louthen
The Corrosive Effect Of Inevitable Discovery On The Fourth Amendment, Tonja Jacobi, Elliot Louthen
Faculty Articles
The Supreme Court has only once, almost four decades ago, addressed the doctrine of inevitable discovery, when it established the exception in Nix v. Williams. Inevitable discovery encapsulates the notion of no harm, no foul—if law enforcement would have discovered unlawfully obtained evidence regardless of a constitutional violation, then the resulting evidence need not be excluded. Nix laid out two simple dictates: the eponymous requirement of inevitability and a corresponding evidentiary burden requiring the prosecution to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that law enforcement inevitably would have discovered the evidence without the violation. Such analysis requires counterfactual …