{"id":4885,"date":"2026-04-24T10:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/?p=4885"},"modified":"2026-04-24T10:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:57:09","slug":"post-carpenter-confusion-to-post-chatrie-clarity-a-shea-daley-burdette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/post-carpenter-confusion-to-post-chatrie-clarity-a-shea-daley-burdette\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Carpenter\u00a0Confusion to Post-Chatrie Clarity – A. Shea Daley Burdette"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How the Fourth Amendment\u2019s third-party doctrine applies to modern surveillance is, of course, an issue of great importance, the answer to which has sweeping implications. In less than a decade, the United State Supreme Court\u2019s decision in\u00a0Carpenter v. United States<\/em> has been cited in various court opinions over two thousand times.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of rapidly advancing technology and ever-changing societal norms, lower courts today must routinely engage with how the third-party doctrine should be applied to numerous surveillance methods. At bottom, the Fourth Amendment\u2019s third-party doctrine in its current form was only suitable in a world where disclosing information to third-party companies was a meaningfully-voluntary choice, i.e.<\/em>, exposures to third-party companies were always escapable and never automatic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, many records reveal the privacies of life that only exist because of the digital age. Importantly, these records are created without \u201cmeaningful voluntary choice.\u201d Not only have they been created without any meaningfully-voluntary choice, but individuals often disclose the information to third-party companies \u201cwithout a second thought regarding whether these exposures provide the government unfettered access to intimate information.\u201d Modern surveillance has required lower courts to apply the \u201cFourth Amendment\u2019s protections to novel surveillance practices in cases involving pole cameras, real-time location tracking, drones, smart utility meters, medical data, social media surveillance, cell site simulators, and more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many instances, the digital age and societal norms have removed one\u2019s ability to truly choose whether to share intimate information with third-party companies. Because this lack of a meaningfully-voluntary choice is \u201calien to well-recognized Fourth Amendment freedoms,\u201d it is vital that the absence of choice does not nullify the protections codified by the Founder\u2019s adoption of the Fourth Amendment. The Court\u2019s third-party doctrine should be adjusted to account for today\u2019s reality.\u00a0An opportunity presents itself this term\u2014United States v.\u00a0Chatrie<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To do so, two factors currently considered within the\u00a0Katz<\/em>\u00a0reasonable expectation of privacy analysis, based on the Supreme Court\u2019s decision in\u00a0Carpenter<\/em>\u2014the inescapability and automatic nature of disclosures\u2014should be extracted from the\u00a0Katz\u00a0<\/em>\u201csearch\u201d analysis.These factors should instead be considered when analyzing whether a potential search was \u201cunreasonable\u201d or not by creating a new warrant exception, the\u00a0meaningfully-voluntary exposure<\/em>\u00a0warrant exception. The Fourth Amendment protects against \u201cunreasonable searches\u201d by the government without a warrant supported by probable cause.\u00a0Principally, \u201cchanging whether the information was inescapably or automatically exposed to a third party does not change whether the governmental action was a search; it instead changes whether the search was reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How the Fourth Amendment\u2019s third-party doctrine applies to modern surveillance is, of course, an issue of great importance, the answer to which has sweeping implications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[72],"tags":[13,14,28,57,149],"class_list":["post-4885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-per-curiam","tag-constitutional-law","tag-criminal-procedure","tag-fourth-amendment","tag-technology","tag-third-party-doctrine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZSiL-1gN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}