Jul 27, 2018
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the government generally must have a warrant to gather location data from cellphones. The case followed an appeal filed by Timothy Carpenter after he was convicted for a series of armed robberies with help from cellphone data obtained by law enforcement without a warrant. Lawyers representing Carpenter asserted that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated, as the lack of a warrant constitutes as an unreasonable search and seizure. The case incited much reaction from both privacy and law enforcement advocates. But now that the dust has settled a bit, what can we take away from the case and how might this change the trajectory of digital surveillance policy in the U.S.? Prof. Orin Kerr of the University of Southern California School of Law and Jennifer Granick of the American Civil Liberties Union, discuss why the case is so significant and what it could mean for the future of digital surveillance, the third-party doctrine and how the Fourth Amendment applies. Kerr also weighs in on how this the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court might impact Fourth Amendment cases in the future.