Protecting Online Privacy in the Digital Age: <i> Carpenter v. United States </i> and the Fourth Amendment’s Third-Party Doctrine

The goal of this paper is to examine the future of the third-party doctrine with the proliferation of technology and the online data we are surrounded with daily, specifically after the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States. It is imperative that individuals do not forfeit their Constitutional guarantees for the benefit of living in a technologically advanced society. This requires an understanding of the modern-day functional equivalents of “papers” and “effects.” Looking to the future, this paper contemplates solutions on how to move forward in this technology era by scrutinizing the relevancy of the third-party doctrine due to the rise of technology and the enormous amount of information held by third parties. The third-party doctrine may have been good law, but that time has passed.

It is time for the third-party doctrine to be abolished so the Fourth Amendment can join the twenty-first century.