Corporate Avatars and the Erosion of the Populist Fourth Amendment

Corporate Avatars and the Erosion of the Populist Fourth Amendment Avidan Y. Cover  ABSTRACT: Fourth Amendment jurisprudence currently leaves it to technology corporations to challenge court orders, subpoenas, and requests by the government for individual users’ information. The third-party doctrine denies people a reasonable expectation of privacy in data they transmit through telecommunications and Internet service providers. Third-party corporations become, by default, the people’s corporate avatars. Corporate avatars, however, do a poor job of representing individuals’ interests. Moreover, vesting the Fourth Amendment’s government oversight functions in corporations fails to cohere with the Bill of Rights’ populist history and the Framers’ distrust of corporations. This Article examines how the third-party doctrine proves unsupportable in the big data surveillance era, in which communicating and sharing information through third parties’ technology is a necessary condition of existence, and non-content data, such as Internet subscriber information or cell site location information, provides an intimate portrait of a person’s activities and beliefs. Recognizing the potential for excessive government surveillance, scholars, courts, and Congress have endorsed corporations as one solution to Executive branch overreach and privacy invasion. This Article demonstrates through both government and corporate reports that companies have rarely challenged government requests for their users’ data. Incentives to cooperate with government surveillance, including highly profitable relationships with government, government regulation of companies, and statutory immunity, make it unlikely that corporations will ever be adequate avatars. This Article further documents how expansive search powers originated in England with the aid of private industry, making corporations dubious guardians of the Fourth Amendment.  Assistant Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law; Director, Institute for Global Security Law and Policy. I am grateful to Jessie Hill, Sharona Hoffman, Lew Katz, Orin Kerr, Raymond Ku, and Cassandra Burke Robertson for their helpful comments. Additional thanks to Andrew Dorchak, Judith Kaul, Lisa Peters, and Hui Wu for their assistance with legal research. 1442 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 100:1441 This Article offers three practicable solutions to increase individual agency. First, the third-party doctrine should be limited in order to permit an expectation of privacy in some non-content data. Second, Congress should enact proprietary rights in certain personal data. Finally, technological advances should facilitate individuals’ selection of corporations’ services and devices that ensure notice of government surveillance and enable direct communication between the people and government over searches and seizures. I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1444 II. THE THIRD-PARTY DOCTRINE AND BIG DATA ............................. 1446 A. O RIGINS OF THE T HIRD -P ARTY D OCTRINE .............................. 1446 B. B IG D ATA ............................................................................. 1447 C. T HE T HIRD -P ARTY D OCTRINE IN THE B IG D ATA E RA .............. 1450 1. Internet Subscriber Information ............................... 1450 2. Cell Site Location Information .................................. 1451 3. Email Contents ............................................................ 1453 4. Telephony Metadata ................................................... 1454 III. THE CORPORATE AVATAR DYNAMIC ........................................... 1456 A. T HE I NEVITABLE C ONSEQUENCE OF THE T HIRD -P ARTY D OCTRINE ............................................................................. 1456 B. J UDICIAL D ISCUSSION OF THE C ORPORATE A VATAR D YNAMIC .. 1457 C. S TATUTORY E NACTMENT OF THE C ORPORATE A VATAR D YNAMIC .............................................................................. 1460 IV. THE LIMITS OF THE CORPORATE AVATAR DYNAMIC ................... 1463 A. C ORPORATE A VATAR C HALLENGES ......................................... 1463 B. T HE P ROBLEM OF N ONDISCLOSURE ........................................ 1467 C. C ORPORATE A VATAR A RGUMENTS ......................................... 1469 V. THE CORPORATE AVATAR DYNAMIC FALLACY ............................. 1473 A. T HE C ORPORATE A VATAR D YNAMIC ’ S F UNCTIONAL L IMITATIONS ........................................................................ 1473 1. Tech Companies’ Relationships with the Government ................................................................. 1473 2. Government Control over Private Communications Systems ......................................................................... 1475 3. The Private Tech Company as a Public Actor ........... 1477 4. Tech Companies’ Attitudes Toward Privacy ............. 1478 5. Immunity ..................................................................... 1479 B. C OUNTERARGUMENT : T HE M ARKET AS A P RIVACY M OTIVATOR .......................................................................... 1481 2015] CORPORATE AVATARS 1443 C. T HE N ORMATIVE W EAKNESSES OF THE C ORPORATE A VATAR D YNAMIC .............................................................................. 1485 1. The Fourth Amendment as a Check on Government ................................................................. 1485 2. English History of Corporate Searches and Seizures ........................................................................ 1485 3. Constitution-Era Distrust of Corporations ................ 1487 4. Fourth Amendment Minority Viewpoint Protection .................................................................... 1488 5. The Corporate Fourth Amendment Right ................ 1489 6. The Dangerous Power of the Private Few ................. 1490 VI. SOLUTIONS TO THE CORPORATE AVATAR DYNAMIC FALLACY ..... 1492 A. N OTICE ................................................................................. 1493 B. L IMITING THE T HIRD -P ARTY D OCTRINE ................................. 1493 1. Non-Content Data Exception ..................................... 1494 2. Involuntary Provision of the Personal Data Exception ..................................................................... 1495 C. T HE P EOPLE ’ S P ROPRIETARY R IGHT TO D ATA ........................ 1497 1. Monetization of Personal Data ................................... 1497 2. Legislating Data Ownership ....................................... 1498 3. Automated Privacy Preferences .................................. 1498 4. Automated Big Data Popular Notice Regime ........... 1499 VII. CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 1501 1444 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 100:1441 I. INTRODUCTION We live in a surveillance state founded on a partnership between government and the technology industry. 1 Edward Snowden’s revelations that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have obtained communications and phone and email records of Internet providers’ users cement this reality. 2 A key feature of the surveillance state is the cooperative relationship between the private sector and the government. The private sector’s role is vital to the surveillance both practically and legally. The private sector, of course, provides the infrastructure and tools for the surveillance. It is through the communications on smartphones built by Apple or the videos hosted by YouTube that the government obtains data. Surveillance is further facilitated by arrangements between the government and companies, such as built-in backdoors and informal agreements. The private sector is also critical to the surveillance state’s legality. Under the third-party doctrine, the Fourth Amendment is not implicated when the government acquires information that people provide to corporations, because they voluntarily provide their information to another entity and assume the risk that the entity will disclose the information to the government. Therefore, people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their calling data, or potentially even their emails. As a result, the government does not normally need a warrant to obtain information transmitted electronically. But the Fourth Amendment is not only a source of protection for individual privacy; it also limits government excess and abuse through challenges by the people. The third-party doctrine removes this vital and populist check on government overreach. The unsatisfying answer to this constitutional dilemma has been what I describe as the “corporate avatar dynamic.” In Internet parlance, avatars refer to characters that represent users in venues as diverse as online games, communities, and discussion groups. 3 But whatever form the avatar takes, the user controls the avatar. In response to critics of surveillance and the third- 1. S ee Jack M. Balkin, The Constitution in the National Surveillance State , 93 MINN. L. REV. 1, 6–9 (2008). 2. See Barton Gellman & Laura Poitras, U.S., British Intelligence Mining Data from Nine U.S. Internet Companies in Broad Secret Program , WASH. POST (June 7, 2013), http://www.washingtonpost. com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html; Glenn Greenwald, NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily , GUARDIAN (June 6, 2013, 6:05 AM), http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order. Just weeks earlier, it was revealed that Verizon acquiesced to government subpoenas of Associated Press reporters’ phone data. See Charlie Savage & Scott Shane, Justice Dept. Defends Seizure of Phone Records , N.Y. TIMES (May 14, 2013)...