Law Commons^™

Fourth Amendment Protection For Stored E-Mail, Patricia L. Bellia, Susan Freiwald

Patricia L. Bellia

The question of whether and how the Fourth Amendment regulates government access to stored e-mail remains open and pressing. A panel of the Sixth Circuit recently held in Warshak v. United States, 490 F.3d 455 (6th Cir. 2007), that users generally retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the e-mails they store with their Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which implies that government agents must generally acquire a warrant before they may compel ISPs to disclose their users' stored e-mails. The Sixth Circuit, however, is reconsidering the case en banc. This Article examines the nature of stored e-mail surveillance and argues …

Flawed Transparency: Shared Data Collection And Disclosure Challenges For Google Glass And Similar Technologies, Jonathan I. Ezor

Jonathan I. Ezor

Current privacy law and best practices assume that the party collecting the data is able to describe and disclose its practices to those from and about whom the data are collected. With emerging technologies such as Google Glass, the information being collected by the wearer may be automatically shared to one or more third parties whose use may be substantially different from that of the wearer. Often, the wearer may not even know what information is being uploaded, and how it may be used. This paper will analyze the current state of U.S. law and compliance regarding personal information collection …

Who Should Be The ‘Decider’ On Keeping Our Secrets?, Stephen E. Henderson

Stephen E Henderson

Fighting Cybercrime After United States V. Jones, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron, Liz Clark Rinehart

David C. Gray

In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus …

Fighting Cybercrime After United States V. Jones, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron, Liz Clark Rinehart

Danielle Keats Citron

In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus …

Has Skinner Killed The Katz? Are Society's Expectations Of Privacy Reasonable In Today's Techological World?, Jason Forcier

Jason Forcier

The right to privacy has and will remain a hotly contested debate about American liberties. In 2012, a 3-0 decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in United States v. Melvin Skinner, the court held that there is no “reasonable expectation of privacy in the data given off by. . . cellphone[s].” Given today’s explosion of cellular technology and use of smart phones, is it unreasonable to believe a person should remain secure in their "person" and “effects," as guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment, from unreasonable searches and seizures? Furthermore, with police requiring only a subpoena to a obtain …

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 …

American Bar Association Criminal Justice Standards On Law Enforcement Access To Third Party Records, Stephen E. Henderson

Stephen E Henderson