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Full-Text Articles in Privacy Law
The Carpenter Test As A Transformation Of Fourth Amendment Law, Matthew Tokson
The Carpenter Test As A Transformation Of Fourth Amendment Law, Matthew Tokson
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
For over fifty years, the Fourth Amendment’s scope has been largely dictated by the Katz test, which applies the Amendment’s protections only when the government has violated a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” This vague standard is one of the most criticized doctrines in all of American law, and its lack of coherence has made Fourth Amendment search law notoriously confusing. Things have become even more complex following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Carpenter v. United States, which has spawned its own alternative test for determining the Fourth Amendment’s scope. The emerging Carpenter test looks to the revealing nature …
Inescapable Surveillance, Matthew Tokson
Inescapable Surveillance, Matthew Tokson
Utah Law Faculty Scholarship
Until recently, Supreme Court precedent dictated that a person waives their Fourth Amendment rights in information they disclose to another party. The Court reshaped this doctrine in Carpenter v. United States, establishing that the Fourth Amendment protects cell phone location data even though it is revealed to others. The Court emphasized that consumers had little choice but to disclose their data, because cell phone use is virtually inescapable in modern society.
In the wake of Carpenter, many scholars and lower courts have endorsed inescapability as an important factor for determining Fourth Amendment rights. Under this approach, surveillance that people cannot …