Fourth Amendment

The Washington Post reported recently that ICE has accessed a Maryland facial recognition database, which includes photographs of undocumented immigrants who obtained special driver’s licenses.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that incidental collection of U.S. persons’ communications under Section 702 does not violate the Fourth Amendment, but raised constitutional questions related to querying databases containing these communications.

In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment applies when the government acquires large amounts of cell-phone location data.

The Fifth Circuit has handed down a fascinating computer search case in United States v. Reddick. Here's the question: If a private company runs a hash of a file and compares the hash to those of known images of child pornography, and it finds a match to a known image and forwards on the file to the government, is it a “search” for the government to then open the file to confirm it is child pornography?