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📝 Page Status: Draft — sourced but not yet reviewed

  • Status: draft
  • Sources: 4
  • Relationships: 3
  • Research debt items: 4

Fourth Amendment

Summary

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits unreasonable searches and seizures and is a foundational source for privacy and surveillance law.

Verified Facts

  • Amendment IV states: "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."1
  • Cornell LII describes the amendment as protecting against arbitrary arrests and as the basis for search warrants, stop-and-frisk, wiretaps, surveillance, and related criminal law and privacy topics.1
  • CASE-CARPENTER-V-US is an OIR seed case record addressing Fourth Amendment protection for historical cell-site location records.2
  • CASE-CHATRIE-V-US holds that police conduct a Fourth Amendment search when they acquire an individual’s Google Location History data via a geofence warrant process.3

Historical Context

Historical context has not yet been drafted.

Digital location records are a live Fourth Amendment frontier: Carpenter for historical CSLI; Chatrie for Google Location History obtained through geofence processes (search holding; warrant reasonableness left for remand). Secondary commentary also discusses reverse keyword warrants and data-broker purchase workarounds; treat those as policy framing until primary legislation/case sources are intake’d.4

Relationships

  • TOPIC-FOURTH-AMENDMENT cites SRC-US-CONST-AMEND-IV-LII.
  • TOPIC-FOURTH-AMENDMENT related_to CASE-CARPENTER-V-US.
  • TOPIC-FOURTH-AMENDMENT related_to CASE-CHATRIE-V-US.

Sources

  1. SRC-US-CONST-AMEND-IV-LII: U.S. Constitution Fourth Amendment (Cornell LII).
  2. SRC-CARPENTER-LII: Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018) (Cornell LII).
  3. SRC-CHATRIE-LII: Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112 (June 29, 2026) (Cornell LII).

Additional sources (not yet cited in footnotes):

Research Debt

  • Add official U.S. Constitution text source.
  • Add case law beyond Carpenter/Chatrie on device searches, keyword warrants, and communications surveillance.
  • Distinguish constitutional text from doctrine and commentary.
  • Review per-fact footnote-to-source mapping; multiple sources are cited on this page.

Document metadata

  • Last verified: 2026-07-30

  1. SRC-US-CONST-AMEND-IV-LII — U.S. Constitution Fourth Amendment (Cornell LII). Primary authority. ↩↩

  2. SRC-CARPENTER-LII — Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018) (Cornell LII). Primary authority. ↩

  3. SRC-CHATRIE-LII — Chatrie v. United States, No. 25-112 (June 29, 2026) (Cornell LII). Primary authority. ↩

  4. SRC-HILL-MARLOW-REVERSE-WARRANTS-2026 — The Hill — Chad Marlow Opinion on Reverse Warrants / Chatrie (July 30, 2026). Opinion/advocacy commentary. ↩