Mike Godwin writes:
Any privacy advocate who has read the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States, which came down Friday, can see plenty in the decision to cheer about but also plenty to worry about.
[…]
But all the justices seem to be overlooking yet another way to sort out “reasonable expectation of privacy” and the third-party doctrine—and that’s the path of going back to not to what Justice Harlan proposed in his concurrence about “reasonable expectations” but what the majority opinion in Katz v. United States actually said: The Fourth Amendment protects “people, not places.” And no matter how much some jurists want to underscore that “reasonable expectation of privacy” has no direct textual roots in the Constitution, no one can deny that the Fourth Amendment’s own text protects “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Security “in their persons” is arguably the real heart of the Fourth Amendment interests raised by cases like Carpenter—not ownership of property.
Read more on Slate.
h/t, Joe Cadillic