The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In addition, it sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
The open-fields doctrine, in the U.S. law of criminal procedure, is the legal doctrine that a "warrantless search of the area outside a property owner's curtilage" does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. However, "unless there is some other legal basis for the search," such a search "must exclude the home and any adjoining land that is within an enclosure or otherwise protected from public scrutiny."
Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), was a United States Supreme Court decision that helped to establish an implied "right to privacy" in U.S. law, in the form of mere possession of obscene materials.
Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court redefined what constitutes a "search" or "seizure" with regard to the protections of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The decision expanded the Fourth Amendment's protections from the right of search and seizures of an individual's "persons, houses, papers, and effects", as specified in the U.S. Constitution, to include as a constitutionally protected area "what [a person] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public".
Mobile phone tracking is a process for identifying the location of a mobile phone, whether stationary or moving. Localization may be effected by a number of technologies, such as using multilateration of radio signals between (several) cell towers of the network and the phone, or simply using GPS. To locate a mobile phone using multilateration of mobile radio signals, it must emit at least the idle signal to contact nearby antenna towers, but the process does not require an active call. The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is based on the phone's signal strength to nearby antenna masts.
Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace.
Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides everyone in Canada with protection against unreasonable search and seizure. This right provides Canadians with their primary source of constitutionally enforced privacy rights against unreasonable intrusion from the state. Typically, this protects personal information that can be obtained through searching someone in pat-down, entering someone's property or surveillance.
A GPS tracking unit, geotracking unit, or simply tracker is a navigation device normally on a vehicle, asset, person or animal that uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) to determine its movement and determine its WGS84 UTM geographic position (geotracking) to determine its location.
Expectation of privacy is a legal test which is crucial in defining the scope of the applicability of the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is related to, but is not the same as, a right to privacy, a much broader concept which is found in many legal systems. Overall, expectations of privacy can be subjective or objective.
Oliver v. United States, 466 U.S. 170 (1984), is a United States Supreme Court decision relating to the open fields doctrine limiting the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984), was a United States Supreme Court decision related to the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. It held that use of an electronic beeper device to monitor a can of ether without a warrant constituted an unlawful search. However, the Court upheld the conviction of Karo and his accomplices, stating that the warrant affidavit contained enough information not derived from the unlawful use of the beeper to provide sufficient basis for probable cause.
United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that recording conversations using concealed radio transmitters worn by informants does not violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and thus does not require a warrant.
United States v. Garcia was a 2007 Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals case regarding the use of GPS devices. The court ruled that placing a GPS tracking device on a personal vehicle without a warrant did not violate a suspect's Fourth Amendment rights.
United States v. Pineda-Moreno, 591 F.3d 1212 (2010) was a 2010 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case regarding the use of GPS devices. The court ruled that a placing a GPS tracking device a personal vehicle without a warrant did not violate a suspect's Fourth Amendment rights, even if the vehicle was parked in the defendant's driveway at the time the device was placed. The case was reversed and remanded by the United States Supreme Court in light of United States v. Jones.
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case which held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
The Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act was a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress in 2011 that attempted to limit government surveillance using geolocation information such as signals from GPS systems in mobile devices. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Jason Chaffetz. Since its initial proposal in June 2011, the GPS Act awaits consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee as well as the House.
United States v. Graham, 846 F. Supp. 2d 384, was a Maryland District Court case in which the Court held that historical cell site location data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Reacting to the precedent established by the recent Supreme Court case United States v. Jones in conjunction with the application of the third party doctrine, Judge Richard D. Bennett, found that "information voluntarily disclosed to a third party ceases to enjoy Fourth Amendment protection" because that information no longer belongs to the consumer, but rather to the telecommunications company that handles the transmissions records. The historical cell site location data is then not subject to the privacy protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause, but rather to the Stored Communications Act, which governs the voluntary or compelled disclosure of stored electronic communications records.
Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case which resulted in the decision that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore, without consent, requires both probable cause and a search warrant.
The third-party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties—such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and e-mail servers—have "no reasonable expectation of privacy." A lack of privacy protection allows the United States government to obtain information from third parties without a legal warrant and without otherwise complying with the Fourth Amendment prohibition against search and seizure without probable cause and a judicial search warrant.
The mosaic theory is a legal doctrine in American courts for considering issues of information collection, government transparency, and search and seizure, especially in cases involving invasive or large-scale data collection by government entities. The theory takes its name from mosaic tile art: while an entire picture can be seen from a mosaic's tiles at a distance, no clear picture emerges from viewing a single tile in isolation. The mosaic theory calls for a cumulative understanding of data collection by law enforcement and analyzes searches "as a collective sequence of steps rather than individual steps."
