searches and seizures made by law enforcement in order to balance the government’s power
to control crime and the liberty and privacy rights of individuals.
CRPR.SAMA.18.03.04 – Know that if government actions don’t invade an expectation of
privacy that society is prepared to recognize, it’s not a search, and the Fourth Amendment
doesn’t apply. In other words, the actions are left to the discretion of individual officers.
62. In the Digital Age, SCOTUS faces a difficult task when deciding if searches by electronic surveillance
violate the Fourth Amendment. Identify types of electronic surveillance that have been named as Fourth
Amendment searches, and briefly explain the reasoning of the Court in making its decision.
SCOTUS has decided that thermal imaging and GPS tracking are Fourth Amendment
searches. In the case of thermal imagers, SCOTUS concluded that, although there was
no physical trespass of the house, the discovery and measurement of heat from a
home is a Fourth Amendment search. In the opinion the Court stated “when the
Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the
home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the
surveillance is a ‘search’ and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.”
Regarding GPS, SCOTUS held that the government physically occupied private
property for the purpose of obtaining information. Given that the Fourth Amendment
protects property, the placement of a GPS tracker on private property constitutes a
Fourth Amendment search.
Searches in the Digital Age
CRPR.SAMA.18.03.06 – Appreciate the SCOTUS’s difficult job of balancing government
power to control crime with individual liberty and privacy in the Digital Age. Know that
SCOTUS has yet to decide if there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in some common
forms of communication, such as text messages and emails.
CRPR.SAMA.18.03.07 – Understand that property is seized whenever the government
meaningfully interferes with an individual’s possession of something. Appreciate the unique
challenges of defining “property,” such as files on a computer, in the Digital Age.
63. Discuss the three-step process used in Fourth Amendment analyses.
Fourth Amendment analyses follow a three-step process based on answering three
questions in the following order: