Jonesing for a Privacy Mandate, Getting a Technology Fix - Doctrine to Follow

While the Jones Court held unanimously that the Government’s use of a GPS device to track Antoine Jones’s vehicle for twenty-eight days was a Fourth Amendment search, the Justices disagreed on the facts and rationale supporting the holding. Beyond the very narrow trespass-based search theory regulating the Government’s attachment of a GPS device to Jones’s vehicle with the intent to gather information, the majority opinion does nothing to constrain government use of other tracking technologies, including cell phones, which merely involve the transmission of electronic signals without physical trespass. While the concurring opinions endorse application of the Katz reasonable expectation of privacy test to instances of government use of tracking technologies that do not depend on physical trespass, they offer little in the way of clear, concrete guidance to lower courts that would seek to apply Katz in such cases. Taken as a whole, then, the Jones opinions leave us still “Jonesing” for a privacy mandate

Reverse-Commandeering

Although the anti-commandeering doctrine was developed by the Supreme Court to protect state sovereignty from federal overreach, nothing prohibits flipping the doctrine in the opposite direction to protect federal sovereignty from state overreach. Federalism preserves a balance of power between two sovereigns. Thus, the reversibility of the anti-commandeering doctrine appears inherent in the reasoning offered by the Court for the doctrine’s creation and application. In this Article, I contend that reversing the anti-commandeering doctrine is appropriate in the context of contemporary immigration federalism laws. Specifically, I explore how an unconstitutional incursion into federal sovereignty can be seen in state immigration laws such as Arizona’s controversial Senate Bill 1070 (SB 1070), the subject of the Court’s recent decision in Arizona v.United States, and also in the Legal Arizona Workers Act (LAWA), the subject of the Court’s consideration in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting during the prior term. The Court upheld Section 2(B) of SB 1070 in Arizona, and upheld LAWA in Whiting, finding these state laws were not preempted by federal immigration law. Yet, in this Article, I conclude that these laws nonetheless interfere with the federal government’s exclusive power to control immigration policy at the national level. Thus, the constitutionality of state immigration laws such as SB 1070 and LAWA should be interpreted within an anti-commandeering framework. This doctrinal shift, from the preemption doctrine to the anti-commandeering doctrine, allows federal courts to examine the constitutionality of state immigration laws through a more explicit federalist lens

The Ironic Privacy Act

This Article contends that the Privacy Act of 1974, a law intended to engender trust in government records, can be implemented in a way that inverts its intent. Specifically, pursuant to the Privacy Act’s reporting requirements, in September 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified the public that record systems would be modified to encompass the collection of social media data. The notification justified the collection of social media data as a part of national security screening and immigration vetting procedures. However, the collection will encompass social media data on both citizens and noncitizens, and was not explicitly authorized by Congress. Social media surveillance programs by federal agencies are largely unregulated and the announcement of social media data collection pursuant to the reporting requirements of the Privacy Act deserves careful legal attention. Trust in the Privacy Act is at risk when the Act’s notice requirements announce social media data collection and analysis systems under the guise of modifying record collection and retention protocols. This Article concludes that the social media data collection program proposed by DHS in September 2017 requires express legislative authorization

The Ironic Privacy Act

This Article contends that the Privacy Act of 1974, a law intended to engender trust in government records, can be implemented in a way that inverts its intent. Specifically, pursuant to the Privacy Act\u27s reporting requirements, in September 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified the public that record systems would be modified to encompass the collection of social media data. The notification justified the collection of social media data as a part of national security screening and immigration vetting procedures. However, the collection will encompass social media data on both citizens and noncitizens, and was not explicitly authorized by Congress. Social media surveillance programs by federal agencies are largely unregulated and the announcement of social media data collection pursuant to the reporting requirements of the Privacy Act deserves careful legal attention. Trust in the Privacy Act is at risk when the Act\u27s notice requirements announce social media data collection and analysis systems under the guise of modifying record collection and retention protocols. This Article concludes that the social media data collection program proposed by DHS in September 2017 requires express legislative authorization

The Ironic Privacy Act

This Article contends that the Privacy Act of 1974, a law intended to engender trust in government records, can be implemented in a way that inverts its intent. Specifically, pursuant to the Privacy Act’s reporting requirements, in September 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified the public that record systems would be modified to encompass the collection of social media data. The notification justified the collection of social media data as a part of national security screening and immigration vetting procedures. However, the collection will encompass social media data on both citizens and noncitizens, and was not explicitly authorized by Congress. Social media surveillance programs by federal agencies are largely unregulated and the announcement of social media data collection pursuant to the reporting requirements of the Privacy Act deserves careful legal attention. Trust in the Privacy Act is at risk when the Act’s notice requirements announce social media data collection and analysis systems under the guise of modifying record collection and retention protocols. This Article concludes that the social media data collection program proposed by DHS in September 2017 requires express legislative authorization

Crimmigration-Counterterrorism

The discriminatory effects that may stem from biometric ID cybersurveillance and other algorithmically driven screening technologies can be better understood through the analytical prism of “crimmigration-counterterrorism”: the conflation of crime, immigration, and counterterrorism policy. The historical genesis for this phenomenon can be traced back to multiple migration law developments, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. To implement stricter immigration controls at the border and interior, both the federal and state governments developed immigration enforcement schemes that depended upon both biometric identification documents and immigration screening protocols. This Article uses contemporary attempts to implement an expanded regime of “extreme vetting” to better understand modern crimmigration-counterterrorism rationales and technologies. Like the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act, extreme vetting, or enhanced vetting, relies upon biometric data as an anchor point for identity databasing and security screening. Thus, emerging vetting systems provide a timely example of the conflation of crime, immigration, and counterterrorism policy. It concludes that Critical Theory and theories of discrimination that stem from litigation surrounding crimmigration-counterterrorism policies may suggest legal avenues to guard against the risk of cyber-registries and algorithmic screening systems dependent upon biometric databases that may promote discriminatory vetting

Crimmigration-Counterterrorism

The discriminatory effects that may stem from biometric ID cybersurveillance and other algorithmically-driven screening technologies can be better understood through the analytical prism of “crimmigrationcounterterrorism”: the conflation of crime, immigration, and counterterrorism policy. The historical genesis for this phenomenon can be traced back to multiple migration law developments, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. To implement stricter immigration controls at the border and interior, both the federal and state governments developed immigration enforcement schemes that depended upon both biometric identification documents and immigration screening protocols. This Article uses contemporary attempts to implement an expanded regime of “extreme vetting” to better understand modern crimmigration-counterterrorism rationales and technologies. Like the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act, extreme vetting, or enhanced vetting, relies upon biometric data as an anchor point for identity databasing and security screening. Thus, emerging vetting systems provide a timely example of the conflation of crime, immigration, and counterterrorism policy. It concludes that Critical Theory and theories of discrimination that stem from litigation surrounding crimmigration-counterterrorism policies may suggest legal avenues to guard against the risk of cyber-registries and algorithmic screening systems dependent upon biometric databases that may promote discriminatory vetting

The Interior Structure of Immigration Enforcement

Deportation dominates immigration policy debates, yet it amounts to a fraction of the work the immigration enforcement system does. This Article maps the interior structure of immigration enforcement, and it seeks to show how attention to its structure offers both practical and conceptual payoffs for contemporary enforcement debates. First, deportation should not be conceptualized as synonymous with immigration enforcement; rather, it is merely the tip of a much larger enforcement pyramid. At the pyramid’s base, immigration enforcement operates through a host of initiatives that build immigration screening into common interactions, such as with police and employers. Second, this enforcement structure has far-reaching hidden costs. Scholars have recognized some of these costs, such as the exploitation of undocumented noncitizens. Yet the full cost of this enforcement structure goes deeper. Beyond enabling exploitative actors, it leaves little room for good faith actors to incentivize socially valuable behavior. In its impact, immigration enforcement bears unappreciated structural similarities to certain low-level criminal law enforcement techniques, where a large population is likewise subject to ubiquitous monitoring by public and private actors alike. As important criminal law and sociological literature shows, this enforcement structure can carry far-reaching costs for society at large. It can create system avoidance (where the regulated population avoids contact with key legal institutions) and law enforcement tradeoffs (where efforts to enforce one law result in underenforcement of other laws). This Article applies structural insights from low-level criminal law enforcement to immigration enforcement to assess the costs of monitoring an undocumented population long-term. It calls for restructuring immigration enforcement to consider the full impact of interior enforcement in light of those who remain present in the United States long term