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File Name | S22-Policy-Stoa-23-AFF-ThirdPartyDoctrine.docx |
File Size | 70.06 KB |
Date added | November 8, 2021 |
Category | Policy (Stoa) |
Author | Vance Trefethen |
Resolved: The United States federal government substantially reform the use of Artificial Intelligence technology
Case Summary: The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution requires law enforcement to obtain search warrants before conducting any unreasonable search and seizure of our homes, papers and effects. Technological changes over the years have required the Supreme Court to make judgments about how and when to apply this constitutional privacy protection over varying circumstances never contemplated by the Founders in the 1790’s.
Warrantless telephone wiretapping, for example, was allowed by a Supreme Court case in the 1920’s. But it was overturned by a later Court decision in the 1960’s (the Katz decision) , where the Court ruled that a citizen’s expectation of privacy was a large factor in determining the need for a search warrant, and that warrants would be required for government eavesdropping on phone calls.
Another factor is the “Third Party Doctrine.” The Supreme Court has ruled that, in general (with some new exceptions recently made), any information you voluntarily disclose to a “third party” (not yourself and not the government) is fair game for the government to collect without a warrant.
A classic example was the Smith v. Maryland case in 1979. Smith was arrested based in part on evidence collected by a tracking system activated at the state’s request (without a warrant) by the telephone company, which produced a list of the phone numbers his private home telephone had called. There was no wiretap and no eavesdropping on his phone calls. Smith argued his arrest violated the 4th Amendment because there was no search warrant. The Court ruled that by making phone calls, the information of who he was calling was automatically transmitted to the phone company, and Smith had to have known this, since it’s a condition of having telephone service. Since Smith had voluntarily given over his information to a “third party” (the phone company), he had no right to claim 4th Amendment protections, and no warrant was required.
Fast forward to the 21st century. Millions of American homes have “smart” devices that record various types of data, including actual voice conversations, in people’s homes. Every time you talk to Alexa or Siri or anyone like that, a server somewhere at Amazon or Google keeps a recording of that conversation (and no one knows for sure whether they are also recording “before” you say “Alexa!” or “Hey Siri!”). Since you voluntarily gave those personal assistants the right to record you in your home, and the recordings belong to “third parties”… they are not protected by the 4th Amendment. The government can demand the recordings from any of the service providers without a warrant. In effect, it’s like the government has a bug planted in millions of homes listening to conversations, completely bypassing the Constitution.
This case argues that the Supreme Court should extend 4th Amendment protection to recordings made inside the home by AI devices and remove them from the “Third Party Doctrine.”
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