Has Katz Become Quaint? Use Of Big Data To Outflank The Fourth Amendment

This article was prepared for Future of Privacy Forum and the Stanford Center for "Internet & Society's 'Big Data and Privacy: Making Ends Meet'" workshop.

Introduction

On December 14, 2010, a federal court, upon a government motion, entered an order pursuant to the Stored Communications Act (SCA) requiring Twitter to turn over to the government subscriber information concerning the accounts of three Twitter users. The order demanded only "non-content" data: names, addresses, and all records of user activity, including dates, times, and IP address data for all subscriber activity since November 1, 2009.

The subscribers filed a motion to vacate the order on grounds that it was insufficient under the SCA and violated both the First and Fourth Amendments. The motion was denied by the magistrate judge.¹ The subscribers then filed objections to the magistrate judge's ruling.² The district judge denied the subscribers' objections, agreeing with the magistrate judge