The Fourth Amendment and Technological Exceptionalism After Carpenter: A Case Study on Hash-Value Matching
Denae Kassotis*
Note

The full text of this Note may be found here.

29 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media &Ent. L.J. 1243 (2019).

Note by Denae Kassotis

ABSTRACT

[T]

he Fourth Amendment has long served as a barrier between the police and the people; ensuring the government acts reasonably in combating crime. Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is more dynamic than other constitutional guarantees, and has undergone periodic shifts to account for technological and cultural changes. The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in United States v. Carpenter marks the most recent jurisprudential shift, as the Court departed from the well-settled reasonable expectation of privacy test to account for a new technology (CSLI records). This Note examines Carpenter’s impact on future Fourth Amendment cases, using another novel surveillance technique, hash-value matching, as a case study. Hash-value matching is a binary authentication method that can scan billions of digital communications in seconds for evidence of contraband.

*J.D. Candidate, Fordham University School of Law, 2019; B.A., History, University of Delaware, 2016. This Note was prepared with the assistance of Professor Olivier Sylvain who served as my faculty adviser on the project. I would also like to thank John Bradshaw and Elias Wright for their input and edits. Lastly, I would like to thank my father, John Kassotis, for his suggestions and constant mentorship.