This year moot court discussed a mixture of fourth amendment privacy rights and first amendment free speech issues. Little did we know that this would become a current issue over the semester. The Supreme Court recently decided on a case that allows for federal agents to use GPS trackers without a warrant. Similar cases have ruled on the rights of the government to search Twitter accounts. This leaves many to wonder, what is really private on the internet?
The corner stone case for modern privacy rights is Katz v. United States. Here, the court established that the fourth amendment protects people not places. Further, this case and others to follow ruled that the fourth amendment must expand and evolve with changes in society. In most cases today, it seems the government has decided society does not have privacy in their online communications. Most of us have been told since we were young that what we put on the internet will be there forever, for all to see. The courts seem to agree with this reasoning, that nothing on the internet is really private.
However, the sixth circuits recent decision in Warshak vs. US seems to differ a little from the Twitter and GPS case. The court analogized a person’s email account as being the same as a home phone line and cited previous cases necessitating email as a form of self identity and self expression. This decision is one court fighting back against government over stepping their boundaries.
The corner stone case for modern privacy rights is Katz v. United States. Here, the court established that the fourth amendment protects people not places. Further, this case and others to follow ruled that the fourth amendment must expand and evolve with changes in society. In most cases today, it seems the government has decided society does not have privacy in their online communications. Most of us have been told since we were young that what we put on the internet will be there forever, for all to see. The courts seem to agree with this reasoning, that nothing on the internet is really private.
However, the sixth circuits recent decision in Warshak vs. US seems to differ a little from the Twitter and GPS case. The court analogized a person’s email account as being the same as a home phone line and cited previous cases necessitating email as a form of self identity and self expression. This decision is one court fighting back against government over stepping their boundaries.