Cassandra Deskus and Joshua R. Fattal report:
From prisons to banks, the mass recording and collection of voices has become increasingly common. This practice can be useful—voiceprint technology (also known as voice recognition technology) helps banks and prisons verify the identity of a caller and prevent fraud. But, used for other purposes, this technology can reveal a considerable amount of personal information about the speaker and those they associate with. To address these privacy concerns, voiceprint technology should be subject to a new Fourth Amendment framework that treats each query of a voice database to verify an individual’s identity – a voiceprint verification – as a unique “search.” Drawing on the Supreme Court’s recent technology-related decisions and the insights of Fourth Amendment experts, we articulate the rationale for and specifics of this framework below.
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