Journal of Law and Technology

Journal of Law and Technology UCLA Volume 11, Issue 1 – Spring 2007 The Third Party Doctrine Redux: Internet Search Records and the Case for a “Crazy Quilt” of Fourth Amendment Protection by Matthew D. Lawless Show abstract » The dark secrets brought to light by America Online’s recent exposure of 658,000 of its users’ search records reveal both a societal expectation of privacy in Internet searches, and an increased likelihood that such information will be used as evidence in criminal proceedings. In the absence of a statutory suppression remedy, the only bar to those records becoming Exhibits A-Z is a Fourth Amendment that, while purporting to protect expectations of privacy society would deem reasonable, utterly fails to consider what society has said about Internet searches