The Third Party Doctrine: An Unreasonable Method for Determining Unreasonable Fourth Amendment Searches in an Ever Advancing Technological World

The Fourth Amendment provides, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Viewed through the specific lens of criminal procedure, there is a long list of jurisprudence that sought to determine the most efficient manner to balance two very important, but competing, interests: the public’s interest in preserving its privacy rights and expectations, and the government’s interest in its ability to investigate and subsequently prosecute criminals. However, the methods and rules previously established have yet to be fully tested in our ever-evolving world of technological advances. This raises the question of whether certain well-established rules, specifically the Third-Party Doctrine, are ill-suited to address modern issues. As it has been applied since 1979, and in the absence of reevaluation, the Third-Party Doctrine is likely to impede, severely, on the privacies guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.
In order to fully understand the gravity of this predicament, the evolution of Fourth Amendment analysis must also be understood. In 1949, the Court established that the Fourth Amendment applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. However, it was not until 1961 that the Court held that the exclusionary rule also applied to the states. And, in 1984, the Court explained that because the exclusionary rule was a judicially created remedy to deter Fourth Amendment violations the costs of excluding inherently trustworthy evidence