Warrantless

On June 16, 2020, the First Circuit released its opinion in United States v. Moore-Bush.  The issue presented was whether the Government’s warrantless use of a pole camera to continuously record for eight months the front of Defendants’ home, as well as their and their visitors’ comings and goings, infringed on the Defendants’ reasonable expectation of privacy in and around their home and thereby violated the Fourth Amendment.  The appeal followed the district court’s decision in June 2019 in favor of Defendants’ motions to exclude evidence obtained via the pole camera.  The Government, without obtaining a warrant, had installed a pole camera on a utility pole across the street from Defendants’ residence.  The pole camera (1) took continuous video recording for approximately eight months, (2) focused on the driveway and the front of the house, (3) had the ability to zoom in so close that it can read license plate numbers, and (4) created a digitally searchable log.

In their motions to exclude, the Defendants, relying on Katz v. United States, argued they had both a subjective and objective reasonable expectation of privacy in the movements into and around their home, and that the warrantless use of the pole camera therefore constituted an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.  The Government relied on an earlier First Circuit case, United States v. Bucci, which held that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in a person’s movements outside of and around their home—“An individual does not have an expectation of privacy in items or places he exposes to the public.”  Thus, Bucci held that use of a pole camera for eight months did not constitute a search.
Continue Reading United States v. Moore-Bush: No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy Around the Home

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Carpenter v.  U. S., a case that involved the collection of 127 days of Petitioner Thomas Carpenter’s cell site location information as part of an investigation into several armed robberies.  We attended the argument to gain any insights into how the Supreme Court may resolve this important case.

The central issue in the appeal is whether the government can access this type and amount of individual location data without a warrant.  But an equally important issue is whether the Supreme Court should reevaluate the “third-party doctrine” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in light of dramatic changes in the way individuals interact with technology in the digital era.  The “third-party doctrine” provides that individuals have no expectation of privacy in any information that is voluntarily released to a third party—a mobile-phone provider, cloud service provider, and the like.  The Court’s decision will have major implications for technology companies’ ability to protect customer data against warrantless searches by law enforcement officials.

During the 80-minute, extended oral arguments, the Justices broadly acknowledged that technology has changed dramatically in the decades since the Court originally recognized the third-party doctrine.  Each Justice, however, appeared to place varying weight on the import of that change on current legal standards.  Justices Kennedy and Alito focused on the information itself, rather than the technology, asking whether location information should be considered more sensitive than the bank information that United States v. Miller permitted law enforcement to access without a warrant, suggesting that banking information might be considered more sensitive.  …
Continue Reading The Supreme Court Arguments in Carpenter Show that It May Be Time to Redefine the “Third-Party Doctrine”

On April 27, the House of Representative unanimously passed the Email Privacy Act.  As previously reported, the proposed changes would strengthen the privacy protections for email and other cloud-storage services by closing a loophole that allowed law enforcement to access older data without obtaining a warrant.

However, while there is widespread support to require…

In a unanimous vote, the House Judiciary Committee approved the Email Privacy Act, a long-awaited update to the 30-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).  The proposed changes would strengthen the privacy protections for email and other cloud-storage services by closing a loophole that allowed law enforcement to access older data without obtaining a warrant. …

On June 22, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Los Angeles v. Patel, striking down a Los Angeles city ordinance that allowed law enforcement to inspect hotel guest registers on demand as facially unconstitutional.  Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Sotomayor held that the ordinance violated the Fourth Amendment by failing to provide for any form of review of search requests before hotels were forced to comply with law enforcement demands.  According to the Court, this failure was fatal to the City of Los Angeles’ argument that the ordinance satisfies the requirements for the administrative search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.
Continue Reading Supreme Court Strikes Down Ordinance Authorizing Warrantless Searches of Hotel Records