The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World

by Orin Kerr

When can the government read your email or monitor your web surfing? When can the police search your phone or copy your computer files? In the United States, the answers come from the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and its ban on 'unreasonable searches and seizures.'

The Digital Fourth Privacy and Policing in Our Online World takes the reader inside the legal world of how courts are interpreting the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. Computers, smartphones, and the Internet have transformed criminal investigations, and even a routine crime is likely to lead to digital evidence. But courts are struggling to apply old Fourth Amendment concepts to the new digital world. Mechanically applying old rules from physical investigations doesn't make sense, as it often leads to dramatic expansions of government power just based on coincidences of computer design.

Written by a prominent law professor whose scholarship has often been relied on by courts in the field, The Digital Fourth Amendment shows how judges must craft new rules for the new world of digital evidence. It explains the challenges courts confront as they translate old protections to a new technological world, bringing the reader up to date on the latest cases and rulings. Informed by legal history and the latest technology, this book gives courts a blueprint for legal change with clear rules for courts to adopt to restore our constitutional rights in the computer age.

Genres: Law, Nonfiction

259 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 12, 2024

Reviews

[Jolynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Orin Kerr brings a career’s worth of study to this broadly accessible book discussing the way the fourth amendment applies (and how it should be interpreted) when dealing with digital technologies. Kerr’s style is eminently readable - he has a great skill of making complicated topics understandable. If you are a person concerned about the ways emerging technologies increasingly used by law enforcement threaten to reduce the scope of individual privacy, this is a great read for you.

[Moishe · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Law is not keeping up with technology - some of that by design to add some friction and slow down rapid radical change. But especially in our digital world the ways law interacts with technology is causing all types of interesting questions explored here.