The Katz Ruling is Key

In approaching privacy issues, we need to return to the precedent set in Katz, that the test for privacy is that an individual must have a subjective expectation of privacy and that the rest of society would deem that expectation to be reasonable. As such, as an individual is relaxing in his home, he is entitled to privacy and that privacy is protected. The Katz ruling and status as precedent indicates that we, as a society, respect an individual’s right to privacy and hold it as paramount, regardless of whether we physically intrude on his space. Following this principle, intrusions ought only be acceptable when an individual acquiesces and hands over his right to privacy or when the rest of society, as determined by a judge and granted through a warrant, decides that an individual’s expectation to privacy is unreasonable.

I feel like in most cases RFID/GPS tracking of individuals on a massive scale by the government is unacceptable as it fails both parts of the Katz test. Implicit in the Katz test and the Fourth Amendment is that everyone *should have the ability to have some privacy*. With mass scale usage of RFID/GPS tracking, this ability is squashed. Beyond a few possible and highly debatable cases which I am not completely decided on, like tracking criminals in a correctional facility (there may be some credence to the point that they lose some societal acceptance of their privacy), with the regular GPS tracking and following of all individuals or RFID chips implanted into passports or even onto people, people lose all possibility of privacy to begin with, a right which we have already established is important. No longer is the individual relaxing in his home protected - with GPS/RFID tracking, an officer driving by knows that he is in there and who he is with. Even in the aforementioned possibly acceptable cases of surveilling criminals, these individuals have, to a degree, already lost a reasonable societal expectation to privacy - preemptively implanting these devices into ordinary people’s lives is wholly unacceptable under Katz’s test.

The Katz’s precedent surrounding the Fourth Amendment indicates that we value an individual’s right to privacy assuming one follows these guidelines, even at the possibility of slowing down law enforcement - unless an individual acquiesces and gives up his right to privacy, the government must obtain a warrant granted by a judge to show they have probably cause and a right to search and seize. This was not apparent with the Garcia case and especially not with the Andrus case. Though Andrus’ actions are reprehensible, the police investigated him in a way which violated his rights much like the police who investigated Katz did; Andrus 1-expected privacy as evidenced by his password protection of his files 2-neither agreed to allow a search nor received any warrant for a search of his computer. The police had a compelling case for probable cause, but failed in obtaining a warrant - no individual, even the officer of the law, has the right to make these sort of decisions at his own discretion.Though Katz’s father allowed for a search of his home, he had no access to the computer and as such had no real authority over the computer and therefore could not give up the computer (he had no ability to acquiesce as that is his son’s right). I think in mapping the present law onto computers, which are wildly complicated in regards to what ‘container’ is entitled to privacy - the whole computer or each individual file or a partition etc - the onus was on the police to, at least, ask the father if he had access to the computer before they opened it up. That the courts defended the police officers under the argument of that Andrus’ father had apparent authority and the police were acting reasonably undermines the Katz principle and the spirit of the Fourth Amendment entirely - it is a ‘ends justify the means’ idea, one which is unacceptable given our essential right to privacy. Andrus ought to be locked away, but the police did it in such a manner which endangers every individual’s vital right to privacy.

Question: The Trulock ruling confuses me; what does an officer need in order to access an individual’s files on a computer - do they get a warrant for the entire computer, or specific partitions, or specific files, etc?

*I edited the portion with asterisks because the language originally was very unclear*