Cato: The Fourth Amendment Still Applies Online

Cato: The Fourth Amendment Still Applies Online by Ilya Shapiro and Aaron Barnes:

The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures by requiring (with limited exceptions) that government agents first obtain a warrant before they go snooping around or confiscating someone’s property. But what exactly does this mean in the modern world of smartphones, wi-fi, and extended Socratic dialogues with Siri? If the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is to be believed, it means that the government can monitor and collect your internet traffic if this information is merely “likely” to be “relevant” to an ongoing criminal investigation.

That is exactly what happened to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of a website known as “Silk Road,” which enabled users to anonymously buy and sell goods and services. In the course of an investigation into illegal activities associated with the website, the government obtained five “pen/trap” orders authorizing law enforcement to collect IP (internet protocol) addresses for any internet traffic going to or from Ulbricht’s wireless router and other electronic devices. These orders were obtained in lieu of a warrant under a statutory “relevance” standard that falls well short of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for probable cause.