Today, we are at a jurisprudential inflection point as courts grapple with when and how the Fourth Amendment should apply to the data generated by technologies like cell phones, smart cars, and wearable devices.In Carpenter, the Court considered how the Fourth Amendment applies to location data generated when cell phones connect to nearby cell towers.

"[I]t is our understanding that the Carpenter decision concerned historical Cell Site Location Information which is distinct from the opt-in app data available on the Venntel platform," the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently told the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) in response to a query about the use of commercial databases such as Venntel.

If you’ve been following privacy issues at all in recent years, you know that websites and smartphone apps are sharing your detailed location information with data brokers and advertisers.

With access to [cellphone location data], the Government can now travel back in time to retrace a person’s whereabouts, subject only to the retention polices of the wireless carriers, which currently maintain records for up to five years.

"With news of the acquisition of your company, I intend to sell my Fitbit & delete my account," said a tweet from Tanya Janca, which received several hundred retweets and likes.

But under the good-faith exception to violations of the Fourth Amendment, the court said the agents acted reasonably and in “good faith” — and so whatever they gathered could still be used at trial.

African Americans are simultaneously more likely to be enrolled in face recognition databases and the targets of police surveillance use.

Under the Electronic Information or Data Privacy Act (HB 57), state law enforcement can only access someone’s transmitted or stored digital data (including writing, images, and audio) if a court issues a search warrant based on probable cause.

On Friday, during the final day of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) had an interesting exchange over recent privacy cases with the Supreme Court judicial nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

EFF, in partnership with ACLU chapters in Massachusetts and Maine, is asking the state courts to recognize, as the Supreme Court did in U.S. v Carpenter, that people have a constitutional right to expect privacy in their physical movements, which can be revealed in minute detail by the cell phones they carry.

The California CPA governs not just information that people share directly with companies, but also personal data held by commercial data-brokers. Just as Carpenter suggests that legal protections follow even shared personal data, the CPA imposes transparency and control requirements even on companies that have no direct relationship with consumers.