Orin S. Kerr (Stanford Law School) has posted The Carpenter Adjustment (Chapter 9, “The Digital Fourth Amendment” (Oxford 2025), pages 151-170) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This essay is Chapter 9 of “The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World.”
The chapter considers how courts should interpret Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court’s blockbuster ruling that cell-site location records are protected under the Fourth Amendment. Carpenter is the Supreme Court’s equilibrium-adjustment for noncontent network information: it recognizes that some network metadata is new and that the translation from physical space to network environments should treat some metadata differently. The question is, Which Internet data qualifies? This chapter develops a three-part test to apply Carpenter to Internet information. It then applies the test to a few important types of Internet information, such as Internet protocol addresses, geofence warrants, trip information, and Google search terms.