Technological innovation benefits individuals by providing them with digital tools that make their daily lives easier. However, those same technologies often times equip the Government to access private information about individuals. For example, Americans conduct an increasing proportion of their daily lives in a digital format, engaging in online transactions that involve confidential data such as personal banking, and storing large amounts of personal data, such as calendars, photographs, contact information and diary entries either on personal computers or online using services such as Flickr and Google Docs. Does the Fourth Amendment offer any protection for information stored online? If not, how robust are statutory protections for this kind of information? Questions we will consider in this class include: Is it reasonable to expect that the police will access your Facebook account in the course of conducting their investigations? Can the Government obtain access to emails stored online? Must Google give law enforcement access to its users’ search histories? Do Fourth Amendment protections cover text messages?
Required readings:
Limitations of the Fourth Amendment and Statutory Solutions:- Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1975).
- Orin S. Kerr, A User’s Guide to the Stored Communications Act, and a Legislator’s Guide to Amending It, 72 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1208 (2004), Part I only.
- Solove & Schwartz, Privacy, Information, and Technology, pp. 140-149, 156-158.
Email:IP Addresses & URLs:- United States v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500 (9th Cir. 2008).
Cell Phone Tracking: Text Messages:Social Networking Sites:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.