Professor Robert Weisberg discusses privacy, the Fourth Amendment and new technology in this Stanford Report article. 

Stanford scholar Robert Weisberg says it is time to match old law – the “third-party doctrine” – to today’s technology. Warrants should be required for law enforcement access to phone and bank data.

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The nation’s privacy law should change to better reflect the reality of today’s technology, a Stanford law professor says.

Robert Weisberg, the Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law at Stanford University, said that the so-called “third party” doctrine of the Fourth Amendment needs to be reformed – it holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties are not protected by a reasonable expectation of privacy. The law allows the government to constitutionally obtain information from third parties without a warrant.

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This past spring, Weisberg guided students in a policy practicum on issues regarding state access to user records held by communications companies. The Stanford News Service recently interviewed Weisberg, the co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, on the topic.

Why do we need changes in the “third party” privacy doctrine?

The U.S. Supreme Court has made a supreme mess of the issue of application of the Fourth Amendment to information held by so-called third parties (companies.) It once held that customers of banks have no protection for their bank records, and customers of telephone companies enjoy no protection, at least for the record of phone logs (as opposed to actual conversations.) The high court just flat-out said that you waive any protection when you sign up.

Now, no one is so sure about how all this applies to Internet service providers and social media companies. On top of this, we as a society are nervous even about phone numbers, given the dot-connecting ability of modern data mining.