Lawfare Daily: Chatting on Chatrie with Adam Unikowsky, Michael Dreeben, and Richard Salgado
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
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Summary
Lawfare Senior Editor Kate Klonick speaks with former Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben; lecturer in law at Stanford, Richard Salgado; and attorney Adam Unikowsky, to discuss the geofencing Fourth Amendment case that was heard Monday, April 27 in the Supreme Court, Chatrie v. United States.
They discuss the background of the case with their unique perspectives, starting with Unikowsky's framing of the case for his client, Chatrie, and his thoughts on the arguments he made in his defense when he argued the case before the Court on Monday. Salgado, who worked for Google for years answering such warrants and co-authored the technologist amicus brief, discusses how the Court seemed to be handling the sophistication of the technology issues. Dreeben, who argued Carpenter, the Fourth Amendment technology case seen as the precursor to Chatrie, frames up the stakes of the Fourth Amendment issues. They debate the values of various technology metaphors, the long term future of the third party doctrine, and what the Justices seem most concerned with coming out of the arguments on Monday.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Kate Klonick, a senior editor at Lawfare. |
| 0:07.8 | You might know me as the person who keeps trying to convince you that content moderation |
| 0:11.0 | is actually fascinating. |
| 0:12.6 | I think that some of you are finally convinced by now, and that's progress. |
| 0:16.7 | Lawfare is built around one simple idea, reliable, independent, non-partisan expert analysis, |
| 0:22.9 | delivered at the pace of news. And these days, the news moves fast, between democracy under pressure, |
| 0:29.6 | technology outrunning the rules meant to govern it, and a whole lot of legal questions that nobody |
| 0:34.5 | saw coming. Careful analysis matters more than ever. And here's a thing. |
| 0:39.9 | We're a 501c3 nonprofit. Everything we produce is free, no paywalls, available to anyone who wants it. |
| 0:46.4 | And that only works because listeners like you step up. And right now, thousands already are. |
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| 0:56.0 | supporter. $10 a month |
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| 1:00.1 | a difference, a huge difference. |
| 1:02.2 | Thanks for listening and thanks for caring |
| 1:03.9 | about the things that matter. In this case, the court is working in a line of cases in which it has steadily readjusted the scope of the Fourth Amendment from physical world, analog world searches to take into |
| 1:30.8 | account the novel potential of technology to intrude on privacy. It's the Lawfare podcast. |
| 1:40.4 | I'm Kate Klonick, senior editor of Lawfare with former Deputy Solicitor General Michael Driban, lecturer in law at Stanford, Richard Salgado, and attorney Adam Unikowski. Google was really acting as an agent of the government when it was executing the search warrant. Like, it is true that Google pushed the button and not the government, but, you know, Google wasn't acting on its own. Google had a search warrant from the government. It was compelled by the government. And so Google's actions really are attributable to the government for Fourth Amendment purposes. Today, we're talking about the geo-offencing Fourth Amendment case that was heard on Monday, April 27th in the Supreme Court, Trat Tree versus the United States. Let's start with you, Adam. There's three of you here, so we're going to kind of |
| 2:19.0 | try to like see how that we can triangulate or recreate in some way the arguments that happened on |
| 2:24.1 | Monday. But you argued the case on Monday, Adam, it was a about a two-hour argument. Walk us |
| 2:31.0 | through the basic mechanics of kind of what had happened to your client to get us |
| 2:35.3 | to this point. And for listeners kind of coming into Chattray Cold, can you set the stakes, |
... |
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