Brian Zilberberg
94 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 958
Although the development of modern technology has impacted and enhanced the lives of average consumers, it has also presented numerous unexpected legal challenges and considerations. These new challenges have made it difficult for many antiquated laws to adequately address the modern legal problems that have emerged with new technology. Of the many growing pains discovered, privacy concerns reign as a dominant issue affecting all citizens across the United States. Technological advancement has made it easy for individuals to log their personal information—including records of their physical location—to better use services that give them directions, local dinner recommendations, and other location-based services. Law enforcement has since caught on and begun seeking this location data to aid their investigations, using geofence warrants to identify individuals who use these location services and subpoenaing the technology companies that store the information.
This Note argues that the practice of geofencing violates an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy in their digital curtilage—a digital sphere of information that reflects intimate, private details of a person’s life. This Note also proposes a reimagining of how geofence warrants could be altered to conform with existing jurisprudence surrounding Fourth Amendment protections. This proposal recognizes the challenges posed by applying existing law to modern problems and balances privacy concerns with the need to keep pace with a continuously evolving technological world.
