The Fourth Amendment 2.0

Current Fourth Amendment rules and doctrines, primarily based on physicality, don’t
lend themselves well to the new digital technologies and techniques available to
criminal investigators. For example, there is no physical analog to location data to
determine whether and how the Fourth Amendment applies to collecting this new type
of record. New rules are needed, a Fourth Amendment 2.0 if you will, to maintain an
appropriate balance between individual privacy protections and the governmental
interest in law enforcement. Significant technological advances have greatly increased
the potential for unprecedented privacy intrusions and the Fourth Amendment rules
must respond accordingly.
The Supreme Court has adjusted Fourth Amendment rules in the past to protect privacy
and the Court will be forced to continue to do so. In Riley v. California (2014), the Court
made an adjustment to the search incident to arrest doctrine to account for cell phones.
A new rule was established in Carpenter v. United States (2018) concerning the
collection of historical cell site information.
How is the Fourth Amendment 2.0 taking shape in the lower courts today? Where is the
law currently, and where is it possibly heading, as it pertains to: reverse keyword
searches, location information such as geofencing and license plate readers, scope of
search warrants for digital data, image/extractions of local devices as seizures of data?
So far, caselaw is relatively sparse and the issues can be challenging.