Search

The widespread storage of documents through the range of Internet technologies known as "the cloud" offers tremendous convenience but also creates significant risks of exposure to third parties. In particular, law enforcement investigators seeking access to potentially relevant evidence have aggressively and extensively used the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 ("ECPA") to execute digital searches. But a relatively obscure provision of ECPA, § 2703, allows law enforcement to search a person's Fourth Amendment "papers" without them ever learning that a warrant has allowed the exposure of their private, sensitive, and possibly incriminating documents. What is more, federal and state law enforcers use their § 2703 secret search power many thousands of times per year, mostly on individuals that they will likely never charge with crimes. This practice denies countless cloud users their traditional Fourth Amendment right to notice of a search. This Article examines the problem of unannounced searches in the cloud and the legal and technological frameworks in which those searches operate. By analyzing the problem through the frames of communications privacy, constitutional history, and Fourth Amendment doctrine, the Article concludes that the current practice of unannounced searches under ECPA fails to meet the basic notice requirement of the Fourth Amendment--a foundational civil liberty that is ancient, important, and hard-won, but also difficult to vindicate through litigation. The Article first explains the ancient origins of the right of notice and how it is threatened by the current federal statutory framework for digital searches. At the policy level, it then identifies the elements that must be incorporated into long-overdue reforms to federal electronic surveillance law to comply with basic norms of the Fourth Amendment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Court of Justice of the European Union in Data Protection Commissioner v Facebook Ireland Ltd acknowledged that European Union law on transfers of personal data from the European Economic Area to a third country is not deferential to that third country's national security powers. The ruling is of significant importance to Australia as it has no adequacy agreement with the European Union that would allow the free flow of personal data between their borders with limited data transfer safeguards. This article examines three case studies involving statutory powers that authorise Australian intelligence agencies to access and use non-citizens' personal data for national security purposes. This examination finds that the European Commission would likely consider these electronic surveillance laws to be barriers to an adequacy decision for Australia if an adequacy assessment is sought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in United States v. Tuggle. The court held that no Fourth Amendment search occurred when police monitored a suspect's home around the clock for 18 months using cameras they installed on nearly utility poles. Topics covered include case background, U.S. Supreme Court rulings on prolonged trackings, and proliferation of invasive surveillance technologies.

The article reports on the proposed legal framework for data transfers between the European Union (EU) and the U.S. It argues that participants of the new framework must be exempted from surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12333. Also mentioned are data as a commodity, the emergence and evolution of data protection, and data transfers to non-EU countries.

By mid-March 2020, Israel had experienced the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Within a fortnight, confirmed coronavirus cases surged from halfa dozen to 178 cases. In response to the challenge of identifying potential carriers, the government tasked the Israeli Security Agency (the ISA, or Shin Bet) with tracing the routes of confirmed coronavirus patients via cellphone location tracking and identifying individuals with whom the patients had been in close contact. Israel's ISA communications metadata collection measures have been shrouded in veil of secrecy. The debate - in parliament and in court - regarding the use of the country's secret service counterterrorism mass surveillance measures to contain the spread of the pandemic is a rare opportunity to assess whether the institutional oversight mechanisms on SIGINT collection activities are sufficient and effective. The paper will (1) describe the existing SIGINT oversight regime in Israel; (2) describe the SIGINT oversight ecosystem's response to COVID-19 location tracking in Israel; and, (3) in light of existing literature, provide an analysis of that response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing capability of surveillance technology in the hands of law enforcement is radically changing the power, size, and depth of the surveillance state. More daily activities are being captured and scrutinized, larger quantities of personal and biometric data are being extracted and analyzed, in what is becoming a deeply intensified and pervasive surveillance society. This reality is particularly troubling for Black communities, as they shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden and harm associated with these powerful surveillance measures, at a time when traditional mechanisms for accountability have grown weaker. These harms include the maintenance of legacies of state sponsored, racialized surveillance that uphold systemic criminalization, dispossession, and exploitation of Black communities. This Article highlights Baltimore City, Maryland as an example of an urban area facing extraordinary challenges posed by an expanding police surveillance apparatus, fueled in part by corruption and limited channels of formal constraint. As Black residents experience the creep of total surveillance and its attendant aims of control and subordination, the need for avenues of effective resistance becomes apparent. This Article argues that these communities may draw hope and inspiration from another period in American history where Black people were subjected to seemingly complete surveillance with limited legal recourse: chattel slavery. People enslaved in or passing through Maryland used a variety of means to resist surveillance practices, demonstrating creativity, bravery, and resourcefulness as they escaped to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Internalizing and building upon these lessons of agency and resistance will be critical for Black communities in Baltimore and other similarly situated places across America that are seeking relief from the repressive effects of pervasive police surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a new and welcome transparency as to the legal framework governing many of the state's surveillance activities in the United Kingdom. The decline of secrecy as to law, however, is only one side of the coin. There remains a significant secrecy as to fact: not only when and where the state's capacities are deployed, but also what those capacities are. Taking as an example the situation of 'IMSI catchers' – devices which permit the detection of mobile phones and interception of its communications – this contribution suggest that this degree of factual secrecy makes it difficult (perhaps impossible) to secure accountability for the conduct of state surveillance, notwithstanding the new era of legal clarity in which we find ourselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the effect of amending Florida Senate Bill 896 on the use of electronic monitoring devices in the rooms of nursing home residents. Also cited are the abuses experienced by residents from nursing homes staff, the aim of the law to protect the health and safety of the elderly population in nursing homes, and the privacy issues over the use of electronic monitoring devices.

When news media in the UK and US discuss China's surveillance networks, it is often to imply that the Chinese government is creating a "techno-authoritarian state" to track and monitor its citizens. News outlets, however, are missing a larger point. The specific problem with China's surveillance apparatus is not that it is technologically "totalizing" and "intrusive," but that it relies on a newly digitized information platform that connects surveillance subjects to information about their households and family members, allowing the simultaneous identification and monitoring of everyone in each kinship network. Referred to as the Household Register or hukou, this platform is the backbone of China's "surveillant assemblage" (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Until the late 1990s when it was digitalized, hukou was an individually separate and distinct surveillance system that contained both general and detailed information about a household and its members. With digitalization, hukou became a platform that integrates different computer systems and databases. CCTV surveillance that involves facial recognition and Internet surveillance practices are connected to, and supported by, information from hukou. In the case of CCTV surveillance, cameras equipped with facial recognition features match the face of surveillance subjects with their ID and trace them back to their families. As for Internet surveillance, the connection between hukou and surveillance subjects happens via telephone number. Access to the Internet and social media platforms such as WeChat, SinaWeibo, and e-mail services requires a telephone number purchased with a governmentissued ID card, which is connected to a household register and, therefore, the telephone card owner's family. Chinese law enforcement's ability to treat individual Internet users also as "collective units" represents the most distinctive feature of Chinese surveillance, an unlimited source of coercion for the Communist Party to reproduce itself as the ruling party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of the technological boom brought the world smartphones, social media, and Siri. These novel benefits, however, were accompanied by unchartered invasions of privacy. Congress has embarked on the seemingly endless path of protecting its constituents through civil and criminal legislation aimed at combatting such invasions. Two recent examples include the Intimate Privacy Protection Act ("IPPA") and the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act ("GPS Act"). Nonetheless, the IPPA, which was proposed to criminalize the dissemination of nonconsensual pornography, has garnered much less support-and much more criticism-than its geolocational counterpart. This Note discusses the striking similarities of both bills, both practically and elementally. The criminality of both bills turns on the issue of contextual consent. Why then do we see such discrepancies in support? The answer may lie in both legal and societal justifications behind privacy protections, suggesting that some forms of privacy warrant more protections than others. Hence, the privacy hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the difficulties facing social media, information and surveillance technologies in the context of the search provision of the U.S. Fourth Amendment. It references the Supreme Court cases Katz v. United States, O'Connor v. Ortega, and New Jersey v. T.L.O. to understand the concept of a person's reasonable expectation of privacy. Some concerns associated with redefining a new standard for determining the expectation of privacy regarding the technologies are discussed.

Although, as a rule, court proceedings and judicial records are presumptively open to the public, electronic surveillance documents are exceptions. Like ordinary search warrants, surveillance applications are considered ex parte. But court orders frequently remain sealed indefinitely, even when there is no basis for continued secrecy. Indeed, secrecy--in the form of gag orders, local judicial rules, and even clerical filing and docketing practices--is built into the laws that regulate electronic surveillance. This Article argues that this widespread secrecy violates the First Amendment right of access to court proceedings and documents. The history of search and seizure shows that, far from requiring secrecy, searches and seizures were historically executed in public, with neighbors watching and even participating. Secrecy surrounding searches and seizures is a relatively new development, linked to the emergence of communications technology and laws governing the acquisition of customer records from third-party service providers. Transparency would play an especially positive role in this context because electronic surveillance is otherwise virtually insulated from public scrutiny: basic information about the scope of the government's authority to conduct surveillance and data regarding the frequency with which it does so is largely unavailable to the public. Sealing also obscures the government's interpretations of its own legal authority, as well as information about law enforcement technologies. These twin arguments--historical and logical--establish a basis for courts to recognize that a First Amendment right of access attaches to surveillance materials after an investigation has concluded. While the government may have a compelling need for secrecy of surveillance materials in ongoing investigations, there is no government interest sufficiently compelling to warrant the sealing of tens of thousands of judicial documents long after an investigation has concluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intersection of rapid technological change and global terrorism has created a problem for intelligence and security agencies that protect their home states. In response, Western legislatures have widened interception powers. This has privacy and security consequences for all users of communications technologies. This article analyses recent changes to the law governing communications interception in New Zealand and places these changes in a global and local context. It measures the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act 2013 and the Intelligence and Security Act 2017 against the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance. Ultimately, this article argues that the New Zealand legislative framework fails to comply with this international best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most surprising episodes of the first hundred days of the Trump Presidency was President Trump's tweet stating "that Obama had [his] 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory." Of the many questions this accusation raised, one of the most pointed was whether then-candidate Trump or his organization were under criminal investigation such that a criminal wiretap could have been authorized. This question was natural because federal law sets a high bar for government officials seeking real-time access to a person's phone calls or emails. But if President Trump had instead accused President Obama of accessing all his emails from the previous few years, the accusation would have been more plausible legally (if not factually) because law enforcement can theoretically obtain emails older than 180 days by issuing a simple subpoena. Does this difference make any sense? This Note examines the current framework for law enforcement access to private communications and proposes concrete ideas to make that framework coherent. Specifically, it advocates adopting a new system for deciding what authorization law enforcement must receive to access different types of communications. This system would be based on the scope of the access and the sensitivity of the material sought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of stingray phone tracker high tech surveillance device, by law enforcement in the U.S. Topics discussed include law regulating the warrantless use of stingrays; the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment remedies for illegal acts of surveillance, specifically, the exclusionary rule for illegally obtained evidence; and alternative remedies related to use of stingray.

In a relatively short period of time, Stingray tracking by lawenforcement officers has become ubiquitous and shrouded in secrecy. These Stingrays engage not only their targeted phone, but also every phone near where they are operating, raising concerns about individualized suspicion and particularity. From a practical standpoint, Stingray tracking is technologically superior to both cell-site location information and global-positioning satellite tracking because it is always done in real time without the involvement of the wireless service provider and does not require the hacking capability of GPS tracking. Up until now, the Supreme Court has avoided deciding the constitutionality of warrantless GPS tracking along with broader questions about the reasonableness of privacy interests in personal data. In the meantime, lower courts are divided on the constitutionality of the police acquiring CSLI from a cell-service provider using a subpoena. Even if the Court ultimately finds that GPS tracking and CSLI acquisition are not searches for Fourth Amendment purposes, those decisions would not necessarily dictate the same result for warrantless Stingray tracking because GPS and CSLI tracking typically involve following a suspect primarily on public thoroughfares while Stingray tracking allows the police to track a suspect's phone inside of the individual's residence and because of the invasion into the phone by the Stingray tracking device to extract the location information. The Court has recently shown a willingness to reign in traditional privacy exceptions when they apply to intrusive high-tech searches in the modern era in the context of searches incident to arrest. Much of the Court's reasoning regarding the difference between searches of cell phones and packs of cigarettes applies by analogy to the difference between visual surveillance and Stingray tracking. The few lower courts that have ventured into this unchartered territory of warrantless Stingray searches have found them to be unconstitutional, but the constitutional dilemmas that Stingray tracking invokes are not new. Instead, Stingrays are just another iteration of the broader problem that the Katz test has failed to keep up with technological changes and developments in high-tech surveillance. The Supreme Court needs to address the applicability of Maryland v. Smith and Miller v. United States to high-tech data mining and analysis, and it needs to do so in a systematic way that addresses not only today's newest technology, but by providing a systematic framework by which tomorrow's searches can be judged, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encryption shields private information from malicious eavesdroppers. After years of slow adoption, encryption is finally becoming widespread in consumeroriented electronic devices and communications services. Consumer-oriented encryption software is now more user-friendly, and much of it turns on encryption by default. These advances enhance privacy and security for millions of people. However, encryption also poses an impediment to law enforcement's ability to gather electronic evidence. Law enforcement calls this the "going dark" problem. U.S. law enforcement agencies have responded through both legal and technological means to encryption's perceived threat to their capabilities. The scope of encryption's impact on those capabilities is not yet clear, and police still have a wealth of data and technical tools at their disposal. Nevertheless, sophisticated criminals can use encryption to stymie investigators, forcing them to resort to resource-intensive, tailored measures to investigate those individuals. One means of doing so is through a "side-channel attack." Our electronic devices are always radiating something--electromagnetic emissions, heat, and so forth. Those emissions reveal information, called "side channel information," about the device. The physical implementation of a cryptosystem leaks electromagnetic emissions from which academic researchers have shown it is possible to extract the system's secret encryption keys. Side-channel cryptanalysis is not a known law enforcement tactic at present, but that may change in time. Law enforcement use of side-channel attacks will raise Fourth Amendment issues that will require a fact-intensive analysis to resolve. In determining what legal process (if any) will authorize a side-channel attack, a court will have to carefully examine what information will be acquired, from where, and how. The Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence does not provide clear, predictable guidance for those inquiries. Its decision in Kyllo v. United States supplies the touchstone for the legal analysis of side-channel attacks. However, the Court's current framework for electronic surveillance cannot adequately safeguard Americans' privacy interests from erosion by technological advances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic monitoring (EM) technologies or ‘tagging’, as the ankle bracelet is known, have been subject to much experimentation across the criminal justice landscape, yet there remains a good deal of conjecture concerning the purpose and subsequent effectiveness of these technologies. This article calls for renewed consideration of both the potential and pitfalls of radio frequency (RF) and global positioning by satellite (GPS) EM technologies and provides a victim-oriented perspective on future developments in EM. The author proposes further interrogation of the penal assumptions that underpin thinking about the use of EM as well as analysis of recent police experimentation with the technology. The article concludes with a call for a clear and strong probation voice in the renewed debates about EM that can guide and support ethical and effective policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of Edward Snowden's disclosures, the United States administration faced a daunting series of challenges on surveillance, cybersecurity, and privacy. Congress was reluctant to enact comprehensive legislation. Moreover, Snowden's revelations had triggered an international trust deficit. To deal with these challenges, the executive branch under President Barack Obama resorted to two alternatives: soft law and agency discretion. Soft law entails the issuance of non-binding policy positions and entry into nonbinding agreements with other stakeholders. In contrast, agency discretion connotes unilateral action by federal agencies. In the soft law domain, the Obama administration sought to ease the post-Snowden trust deficit with Presidential Policy Directive No. 28, which expressly recognized global privacy rights. In collaboration with the EU, the Obama administration also crafted the Privacy Shield agreement governing U.S.-EU commercial data transfers, which created an ombudsperson in the State Department to address EU complaints about U.S. surveillance. The agency discretion model has also yielded advances on privacy. The Federal Trade Commission, for example, has implemented cybersecurity best practices through settlements with firms whose negligence resulted in data breaches. While both soft law and agency discretion have marked virtues, they also create risks. In disputes with Microsoft regarding overseas data and with Apple about iPhone encryption, U.S law enforcement prioritized the acquisition of information needed for investigations over engagement with stakeholders. Moreover, soft law often lacks clear norms and enforcement mechanisms. For example, the Privacy Shield agreement lacks specificity on the ombudsperson's powers, which may blunt the ombudsperson's ability to check the U.S. intelligence community. To analyze the Obama administration's cyber efforts, this Article proposes a paradigm of stewardship with both discursive and structural dimensions. Discursive stewardship refers to the Executive's openness to dialogue with other stakeholders. Structural stewardship refers to the domestic and transnational distribution of decisional authority, including checks and balances that guard against the excesses of unilateral action. The Article concludes that the Obama administration made substantial progress in each of these realms. However, the outsized role of law enforcement agendas and dearth of clearly articulated checks on transnational surveillance drove headwinds that limited forward movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nearly three decades, American law enforcement has conducted a coordinated campaign across all levels of government to hide its use of a powerful surveillance technology called cell site simulation. Commonly referred to as "stingrays," the devices allow police to covertly monitor cellular communications and track individuals in real-time with remarkable precision. Despite the tenuous legal ground on which the warrantless use of the devices rests, federal law enforcement has contractually forbidden their state and local counterparts from revealing to courts when they employ stingrays in an investigation. Records indicate authorities have facilitated this secrecy by attributing information gained from the devices to a "confidential source" when presenting it in court. This Note examines law enforcement's concealment of stingrays within the broader context of "the informant's privilege," the legal doctrine that allows the government to shield the identity of confidential sources in criminal cases. It argues that neither the legal requirements of the privilege nor its underlying policy rationales support extending protections to inanimate surveillance technologies and the state actors who employ them. Further, this Note contends that doing so undermines the rights of defendants and impinges on the core prerogatives of legislatures and the judiciary. To rectify the hole in current law that permitted the secrecy surrounding stingrays to long go unchecked, this Note proposes a pre-trial disclosure requirement for the investigative utilization of technology not in general public use. The elements of such a requirement are well established in case law, and the simple rule would strike the proper balance between security, defendants' rights, and the integrity of the legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to public surveillance. Topics include the legal treatment of surveillance technologies in cases such as the U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Katz, the use of biometric identification and cell phones in surveillance, and standards for the requirement of a search warrant.

The article discusses international law and norms in light of the relation between mass surveillance and cyber espionage. Topics include the prevalence of economic cyber espionage allegedly committed by Chinese hackers, legal enforcement of privacy concerns in relation to electronic surveillance and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and political resistance to U.S. electronic surveillance in other countries.

The article focuses on the issues surrounding the automatic encryption of communications on smartphones in the U.S. Topics discussed include protections afforded to individuals by the Fourth Amendment to U.S. Constitution as well as relevant legislation for electronic surveillance and encryption; analysis of legal framework for technology firms that employ encryption software on smartphones; and Katz v. United States court case on same.

The article discusses the relation of stingray technology that tracks cell phones to citizens' privacy rights. Topics include U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) policy on the issue; the relation of the issue to New York State courts and policy; and the views of the organization New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) on the need for warrants for Stingray use.

The article focuses on legal structures need for development of new rules and principles capable of regulating law enforcement access to Internet communications data and electronic surveillance law. It mentions the U.S. Supreme Court decision in cases Smith v. Maryland and Katz v. United States on electronic surveillance law. It also mentions interpretation of the reasonable expectation of privacy (REP) test with analogies to the for an Internet protocol (IP)-based communications environment.

The article focuses on origin and development of modern arrangements for authorization and oversight of interception of communications within Great Britain. Topics discussed include role of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in shaping the contours of British surveillance law, court's power to enforce the human rights provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and government surveillance and privacy rights with the law of telephone wiretapping.

The article presents a study on how the perception of online surveillance impacts citizen organizing and the research process. Topics discussed include inability of researchers to guarantee confidentiality and identity protections to research participants; risks identified by some citizen-activists in Aotearoa New Zealand mobilizing against an oil extraction proposals; and use of online surveillance by political system to supports private industry.

The article discusses arguments of the judgment of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal on the Polish electronic surveillance law, issued on July 30, 2014, examining the background of challenged provisions, political context of motions and the decision. Topics discussed include challenged provisions related to operational control and access to retained metadata, privacy and communication secrecy protection in digital era, and decision compared to constitutional case law of other European courts.

The article examines the U.S. and People's Republic of China (PRC) approaches to Internet surveillance; reports the criticism of China's from the U.S. for the human rights issues raised by its Internet surveillance program; and mentions the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Kyllo v. United States.

The article explores the legislative framework for computer related criminal crimes in the U.S. Topics discussed include introduction of the Electronic Surveillance & the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal approaches used for prosecuting computer crime and analyzes enforcement strategies; and decision of the fifth circuit court in 'Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. U.S. Secret Service.'

Edward Snowden's leaks laid bare the scope and breadth of the electronic surveillance that the U.S. National Security Agency and its foreign counterparts conduct. Suddenly, foreign surveillance is understood as personal and pervasive, capturing the communications not only of foreign leaders but also of private citizens. Yet to the chagrin of many state leaders, academics, and foreign citizens, international law has had little to say about foreign surveillance. Until recently, no court, treaty body, or government had suggested that international law, including basic privacy protections in human rights treaties, applied to purely foreign intelligence collection. This is now changing: Several UN bodies, judicial tribunals, U.S. corporations, and individuals subject to foreign surveillance are pressuring states to bring that surveillance under tighter legal control. This Article tackles three key, interrelated puzzles associated with this sudden transformation. First, it explores why international law has had so little to say about how, when, and where governments may spy on other states' nationals. Second, it draws on international relations theory to argue that the development of new international norms regarding surveillance is both likely and essential. Third, it identifies six process-driven norms that states can and should adopt to ensure meaningful privacy restrictions on international surveillance without unduly harming their legitimate national security interests. These norms, which include limits on the use of collected data, periodic reviews of surveillance authorizations, and active oversight by neutral bodies, will increase the transparency, accountability, and legitimacy of foreign surveillance. This procedural approach challenges the limited emerging scholarship on surveillance, which urges states to apply existing - but vague and contested - substantive human rights norms to complicated, clandestine practices. In identifying and valuing new, objectively verifiable, neutral norms, the Article offers a more viable and timely solution to the perils of foreign surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980's, police have used tracking technologies to obtain valuable investigatory information on the movements of criminal suspects. Recent developments in GPS technology and the ongoing emergence of drone-based tracking technology allow for constant, twenty-four hour, seven-day-a-week surveillance of individuals, providing pinpoint accuracy of their every movement. This intimate level of data collection, when obtained without a warrant, pushes Fourth Amendment reasonable search principles to the limit. In the recent case of United States v. Jones (2012), two dueling theories, property rights and Katz's reasonable expectation of privacy, were advanced for testing the reasonableness of tracking searches. The narrower property rights theory prevailed in Jones, but did so with four Justices openly favoring the Katz test and a fifth Justice suggesting that, in a future case not involving property rights, she would also apply the Katz test. This Article examines how Jones has been implemented by lower courts and looks at both theories as they apply to existing technologies and technologies currently in development, highlighting the weaknesses and strengths of the Jones ruling. Based on this analysis, the Article concludes that the Katz reasonableness test is better prepared to handle the stress placed on privacy and the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches posed by new age technology. From this conclusion, the Article proposes a comprehensive model legislative solution, based on the analysis of Jones and existing state statutes, to regulate police use of tracking technology and to establish a warrant process for tracking searches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the legal aspects of reasonable expectations of anonymity and privacy under American laws and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The relationships between technology, data analysis, and the law are addressed. U.S. constitutional laws are examined in relation to genetic information databanks, locational surveillance techniques, and the nation's Supreme Court. Several search and seizure-related legal cases are assessed, including Katz v. United States.

In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from installing GPS devices on suspects ' cars without a warrant. Although the majority limited its holding to the physical installation of such devices, five concurring Justices (including Justice Sotomayor, who joined the majority opinion) indicated their desire for broader privacy protections by endorsing the adoption of the "mosaic theory. " Under this theory, certain types of long-term (or otherwise expansive) surveillance violate a suspect 's reasonable expectation of privacy, even when each individual act of surveillance would otherwise pass Fourth Amendment muster, because the government can analyze the information in the aggregate to infer private details about the suspect that no individual member of the public could reasonably discover by observing her for a short time. While Jones was limited to GPS tracking, mosaic theory concerns logically extend to a much wider range of new technologies. In recent years, telephone and Internet service providers have amassed extensive (andgrowing) amounts of data about their customers--more than enough to construct revealing mosaics of these individuals ' lives. But under the Stored Communications Act, a component of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, the government may order such companies to turn over customers ' records using only a court order or an administrative subpoena--less than the warrant and probable cause requirements of a typical Fourth Amendment search. Responding to such increasing threats to privacy, this Note proposes an amendment to the Stored Communications Act that would incorporate the mosaic theory into the statute. Under this proposal, government requests for the contents of communications as well as requests for expansive amounts of "noncontent" metadata would require a warrant and probable cause. Targeted and limited requests for noncontent data, however, would remain governed by the Stored Communications Act's current requirements. These changes would address the concerns articulated by the mosaic theory while improving the statute's ability to address future technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on legislative initiatives made by Tennessee General Assembly to preserve personal privacy and criminal law. Topics discussed include the Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act that prohibited law enforcement agency using a drone to collect evidence, amendment of Tennessee law concerning government tracking of location information from an electronic device without a warrant and Tennessee law regulating cell phone searches by law enforcement officers.

The author focuses on the need of improved procedural safeguards for government access of electronic data during criminal investigation in the U.S. Topics discussed include the Petraeus scandal involving former director of the Central Intelligence Agency David Petraeus, and privacy concerns related to government's access of electronic data. It suggests statutory solutions that the U.S Congress should apply to improve regulation of government surveillance.

The article focuses on the need to develop a set of constitutional rules for the ubiquitous surveillance of public space, and for the collation of data mining, sorting, and sifting. Topics discussed include U.S. Supreme Court cases such as United States v. Jones and Riley v. California related to Fourth Amendment, implications of a constitutional regime that attaches the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement to data access and warrant requirement attaches at the point of human access.

Reviews are provided for the articles "Wrestling with Gender: Constructing Masculinity by Refusing to Wrestle Women" by Deborah L. Brake in a 2013 issue of the "Nevada Law Journal," "Reality Over Ideology: A Practical View of Special Needs Voucher Programs" by Elizabeth Adamo Usman in a 2014 issue of the "Capital University Law Review," and "School Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment" by Jason P. Nance in a 2014 issue of the "Wisconsin Law Review."

The article focuses on problem of secret interpretations of surveillance law and the use of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to guard against the secret surveillance law of the U.S. and mentions the U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. U.S. District Court related to surveillance.

The article discusses how recognition of automatic license plate is unconstitutional under the mosaic theory of Fourth Amendment privacy law of the U.S. Constitution. Topics discussed include need of balance between the citizens' right to privacy and the need for safety through government surveillance; decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in court case United States v. Jones, and the forth amendments provisions for citizens' reasonable expectation of privacy.

The recent exposure of the NSA documents has raised a great deal of concerns with regards to the effective control of companies that cooperate with intelligence agencies. It also exposed a network of secret government spying partnerships used to go around existing domestic guarantees and to spy on one's own citizens through the back door. The dread that both legal and technological means designed with legitimate purposes such as counter-terrorism and crime prevention are also employed for total social control is now out there. In many aspects it looks like we are experiencing the end of privacy and opting for a 'surveillance society' instead. In the clutter of pressing issues, most of the recent scholarly attention has focused on the assessment and reform proposals of the existing, but as it turns out inadequate with respect to actual rights protection, domestic legal frameworks. This has left the obligations of the intruders under international human rights law unconsidered. Therefore, the present paper aims at evaluating the legality of such surveillance programs under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]