Mediaboss Marketing

People get so upset when they hear Dallas-Fort Worth is using facial recognition technology for flights, yet at the same time, they are Snapchatting their face with reindeer antlers, Tuma said. Its the same technology and were doing it all day on Snapchat, but we freak out when the government does it.

The Fourth Amendment protects Americans right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Part of the publics consternation over law enforcement probing peoples digital lives and the relative ease with which they are allowed to do so is the lack of knowledge surrounding court rulings and the Fourth Amendment, according to one criminal justice expert.

The evolution of law enforcements authority in this area may surprise people, said Christopher Hill, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma whose research areas include criminology, criminal justice and juvenile justice.

Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have been dealing with the application of the Fourth Amendment since at least 1914 in a case called Weeks v. U.S., Hill said. From brief stop and frisk encounters, to searches and seizures at public schools, there has been a lot of court activity surrounding police power and the Fourth Amendment.

Hill pointed to three other notable cases that illuminate that activity.

In a 1998 appeal case for an insider securities trading conviction United States v. Smith the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided evidentiary issues involving the illegal interception of voicemail.

The court said in its ruling that the intersection of two laws the 1968 Wiretap Act and the 1986 Stored Communications Act is a complex, often convoluted area of the law. This case turns, at least in part, on issues at the very heart of that intersection.

(Story continued below...)

More here:
If it's in writing, don't think it's a secret - Oklahoman.com