4th Amendment
187 Articles
Homeland Insecurity: Checkpoints, Warrantless Searches and Security Theater
Since June 2013, the American public, press, and policy-makers have been debating the implications of Edward Snowden’s disclosures of mass U.S. government surveillance programs,…
Apple, Boyd, and Going Dark
Apple’s recent announcement that it will encrypt its newest iPhones is again pushing to the fore the question of whether the law should be updated to require companies to have…
Constitutional “Cross-Ruffing”: My New Article
About a year ago, I wrote about the Second Circuit’s decision in the Ghailani case, in which, among other things, the Court of Appeals rejected a former Guantánamo detainee’s…
FBI is Hurting Apple and Google’s Competitiveness with Crypto Backdoor Demands
Last week, FBI Director James B. Comey dispatched his minions to yell at Apple and Google for architecting their smartphones such that government officials cannot decrypt information…
Renewed focus on statutory construction in the Section 215 litigation
C-SPAN videotaped Tuesday’s oral argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in ACLU v. Clapper, one of the primary challenges to the Section 215 telephony…
DOJ Files Opening Brief in Klayman Appeal
It’s been some time since we’ve discussed developments related to the Section 215 telephony metadata program. More attention of late has been focused on Section 702…
Riley v. California — An Important Step Forward, but How Far Forward?
The joined cases of Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie rightly have been hailed as a ringing endorsement of privacy in the digital age. By holding that police may…
Fifth Circuit on Extraterritorial Application of Fourth and Fifth Amendments
On the heels of this morning’s Fourth Circuit decision in the Abu Ghraib case comes another significant circuit-level decision–this one from the Fifth Circuit. The…
SCOTUS & Cell Phone Searches: Digital is Different
Today, the Supreme Court unanimously invalidated warrantless searches of cell phones incident to arrest in Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie. Full disclosure: my colleagues…
Meshal: The Last, Best Hope for National Security Bivens Claims?
Last Friday, Judge Sullivan (D.D.C.) dismissed Meshal v. Higgenbotham, a long-outstanding Bivens suit brought by a U.S. citizen who alleged that, while travelling in the Horn…
Magistrate’s Compliance: Searching Electronic Data Overseas
Amidst all the talk about the so-called Magistrates’ Revolt (referring to a group of magistrates pushing back against the government’s broad electronic search requests), it’s…
DOJ Pushes to Expand Hacking Abilities Against Cyber-Criminals
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Department of Justice is seeking increased authority to remotely search not only computers but also cloud based services to which those…