PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

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Does the U.S. Supreme Court’s Decision on the 4th Amendment and Cell Phones Signal Future Changes to the Third Party Doctrine?

by Daniel J. Solove Today, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision on two cases involving the police searching cell phones incident to arrest. The Court held 9-0 in an opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant to search a cell phone even after a person is placed […]

United States v. Jones and GPS Surveillance

Location Privacy 02a

The Supreme Court has long held that there is no expectation of privacy in public for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment.  Because the Fourth Amendment turns on the existence of a reasonable expectation of privacy, the Court’s logic means that the Fourth Amendment provides no protection to surveillance in public.  In United States v. Jones, the […]

GPS Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment: Thoughts on United States v. Jones

In United States v. Jones, FBI agents installed a GPS tracking device on Jones’ car and monitored where he drove for a month without a warrant.  Jones challenged the warrantless GPS surveillance as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.  The D.C. Circuit agreed with Jones.

Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security

Nothing to Hide

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my new book, NOTHING TO HIDE: THE FALSE TRADEOFF BETWEEN PRIVACY AND SECURITY (Yale University Press, May 2011).  Here’s the book jacket description:

City of Ontario v. Quon: The Rights of Other Parties to the Communication

City of Ontario v Quon

I blogged about City of Ontario v. Quon a few days ago, and I want to raise another important issue in the case, one my colleague Orin Kerr has astutely pointed out.  The case is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme from the 9th Circuit: Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co., Inc., 529 F.3d 892 […]

Herring v. United States, the Exclusionary Rule, and Errors in Databases

Errors in Databases

Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Herring v. United States, a case examining whether the exclusionary rule should apply to a search that was based on an error in a database. In particular, due to a negligent error in a computer database indicating that there was an outstanding felony arrest warrant for Bennie […]