The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons,

houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Notice anything about that list? Right. In thinking through what they wanted to protect,

the founders wrote down a bunch of physical stuff. They were worried about the government

busting into their rooms and rifling through their desks.

We should still be concerned about no-knock raids at our houses.

But today we also face a new set of challenges.

Challenges brought on by the advance of technology.

Powerful cameras and sensors can monitor virtually every outdoor space.

AI-driven software platforms can process reams of data. The capacity to store information for

later use is practically infinite. And, of course, all kinds of personal information is floating around on the internet

available to anyone interested in vacuuming it up. Put all this together, and the government can

learn a remarkable amount about you. More than that, it can do so without ever searching you

in an old-fashioned sense. It doesn't even need to conduct a search

directed at you specifically. Question is, can the Fourth Amendment and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence

keep up? The Supreme Court has granted the state broad authority to monitor public thoroughfares,

including with, quote, such enhancement of

police officer's senses as science and technology afford them. It has placed only very weak checks on

the state's ability to gather information about a person from third parties. And it has put no

limits on how the state pools and analyzes information

it has lawfully collected. There's indeed a risk, therefore, that increasingly effective

tools of surveillance could grind the Fourth Amendment into dust. This is the Tech Policy

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