In the post-Dobbs landscape, states are criminalizing reproductive health in a variety of ways. Law enforcement will likely reach for digital surveillance tools in these cases and defenders will need to know how to counter that evidence. NACDL's Criminalization of Reproductive Health Taskforce and 4th Amendment Center researched categories of pregnancy criminalization, connected them to types of surveillance that law enforcement might use, and connected those to resources. Some tools show up several times on this page, which speaks to the omnipresence of these types of surveillance. 

In People v. Seymour, 21CR20001, defense challenges the constitutionality of a reverse keyword warrant served on Google for anyone who searched for a particular physical address over 15 days, and moves to suppress all resulting evidence. The Fourth Amendment Center’s Litigation Director, Michael Price, is co-counsel for the defense. 

22^nd Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference
August 16-17, 2023 | Held Virtually

Law enforcement has increasingly turned to Google to identify criminal suspects by using digital dragnets that search millions or billions of people at once.

Memorandum of Law in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction

ACLU v. Clapper 1:13-cv-03994-WHP (S.D.N.Y.)

Memorandum In Support Of Motion For Summary Judgment

Amnesty, Int'l v. Clapper 1:08-cv-06259-JGK (S.D.N.Y.)

The Board of Directors adopted model legislation to protect individual privacy against unwanted governmental intrusion through the use of drones

Geofence warrants, a type of reverse search warrant, compel companies, like Google, to turn over substantial information about devices interacting with their technology within a particular geographic region. For this reason, geofence warrants mark an unprecedented increase in the government's ability to locate individuals without investigation. This primer will show you how geofence warrants are constructed and outline strategies to challenge these warrants when they appear in criminal cases. 

 To identify suspects, law enforcement officers are turning increasingly to reverse search warrants, such as geofence warrants and keyword search warrants. These are searches used to find suspects and are not conducted to find evidence on a targeted individual. This trend presents novel challenges to the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights in the United States. 

Subject matter experts and litigators from NACDL’s Fourth Amendment Center explain and discuss some of the important digital technology issues that defense counsel will very likely encounter in these cases. The faculty focus on reverse searches, facial recognition, and device searches.

Reply brief of the appellant in US v. Chatrie. Michael Price, the Fourth Amendment Center's Litigation Director, is co-counsel for Mr. Chatrie. 

As a criminal defense organization, we do not profess to possess expertise in policing practices insofar as those practices do not directly intersect with the criminal justice system. But many police practices do have a direct impact on the treatment of accused persons, the degree to which their cases are litigated justly, and case outcomes. Accordingly, we offer a few key insights, which we hope will find their way into the Commission’s recommendations.

(Updated Jan. 18, 2023, see below) Since 2010, law enforcement agencies in the United States have had direct access to an increasing volume of bulk data about people’s wire transfer transactions. The core of this previously secret program is a database containing records of virtually every money transfer of more than $500 sent to, from, or within Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, or Mexico.

This practice advisory aims to: 1) explain what was involved in this bulk money transfer surveillance program; and 2) provide defense counsel with potential challenges to it.

20^th Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference
August 18-20, 2021 | Held Virtually

Police departments across the country are increasing using predictive algorithms to decide where to patrol and who to investigate. These tools are also being used to create databases that label people as threats and feed them into the criminal legal system.

NACDL's Fourth Amendment Advocacy Committee carefully and comprehensively studied issues concerning the current United States Postal Service Mail Covers regime following the revelations in The New York Times investigative report in connection with the 2014 U.S. Postal Service audit of the program. The concerns raised by this program and its operation fall squarely within NACDL's long history of advocating for the vitality of Americans' privacy and Fourth Amendment rights -- in the courts, in the legislatures, in executive agencies, and in the public arena. [Released April 2015]