The intent of this thesis is to examine the future of the third-party doctrine with the proliferation of technology and the online data we are surrounded with daily, specifically after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Carpenter v. United States. In order to better understand the Supreme Court's reasoning in that case, this thesis will review the history of the third-party doctrine and its roots in United States v. Miller and Smith v. Maryland. A review of Fourth Amendment history and jurisprudence is also crucial to this thesis, as it is imperative that individuals do not forfeit their Constitutional guarantees for the benefit of living in a technologically advanced society. This requires an understanding of the modern-day functional equivalents of "papers" and "effects." Furthermore, this thesis will ultimately answer the following question: Why is it legally significant that we protect at least some data that comes from technologies that our forefathers could have never imagined under the Fourth Amendment? Looking to the future, this thesis will contemplate solutions on how to move forward in this technology era. It will scrutinize the relevancy of the third-party doctrine due to the rise of technology and the enormous amount of information held about us by third parties. In the past, the Third-Party Doctrine may have been good law, but that time has passed. It is time for the Third-Party Doctrine to be abolished so the Fourth Amendment can join the 21st Century.

<p dir="ltr">FemTech is a booming subset of mHealth applications that was worth $51 billion in 2021 (Stewart, 2022b). FemTech largely focuses on menstruation, pregnancy, and fertility tracking. As with any technology, it comes with privacy and security risks for users, but these risks are more acute due to the sensitive nature of the data being collected. While privacy and security shortcomings have been highlighted for years, concerns were discussed widely in the United States after the Supreme Court released its <i>Dobbs v. Jackson</i> decision on June 24, 2022, which overturned <i>Roe v. Wade</i>, a 1973 decision that protected abortion as a constitutional right and limited states’ abilities to place restrictions on abortions. With abortion no longer a constitutional right, many states have outlawed or heavily restricted the procedure, and individuals expressed concern about their digital data being used in investigations as it has been in select previous cases (e.g., <i>State of Indiana v. Purvi Patel</i>, 2015; <i>State of Mississippi v. Latice Fisher</i>, 2018; <i>The State of Nebraska v. Celeste Burgess</i>, 2023; <i>The State of Nebraska v. Jessica Burgess</i>, 2023). While Big Tech has been scrutinized for turning user data over to law enforcement, many have more heavily questioned the protections offered by period tracking app companies due to the abundant amount of health data these companies possess about their users (e.g., Basu, 2022; Bradley et al., 2022; Cole, 2022). These apps have historically fallen short in protections for their user data in general (e.g., Beilinson, 2020; <i>Developer of Popular Women’s Fertility-Tracking App Settles FTC Allegations That It Misled Consumers About the Disclosure of Their Health Data</i>, 2021; Quintin, 2017). Clue is one of the most popular FemTech apps with millions of downloads across the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and the company has spoken out widely about their privacy protections in the wake of the <i>Dobbs v. Jackson</i> decision (<i>‎Clue Period Tracker & Calendar</i>, n.d.; <i>Clue Period Tracker & Calendar</i>, n.d.; <i>Clue’s Response to Roe vs Wade Decision</i>, 2022). This research presents a forensic analysis of Clue on both iOS and Android after two months of data population, finding that some user-entered data was available in the app cache or .db-wal files on both iOS and Android but was entirely erased after the deletion of the app on the phones. This research also presents results from a survey of 31 menstruators in the United States, finding that online privacy in general is a concern for many users, and most find it unacceptable for period tracking applications to share user health data with advertisers or law enforcement.</p>

The examination of the role of the state in the broader context of socio-technical entanglement within data governance has received less attention due to the emergence of other powerful corporate actors (e.g. Big Tech). This thesis utilizes quantitative content analysis to investigate and compare how state agencies (the White House, FTC, Congress) and CNN framed data governance in 2022, focusing on the role of the state amid growing data privacy concerns following the Roe v. Wade overruling. The ultimate aim is to pinpoint the sociotechnical imaginaries that gain traction, having a constitutive effect on the US data governance order. Empirical results indicate that framings between the two units rather align than differ, particularly in the wake of the overruling. The evidence points to the active and multiple roles of the state and the coexistence of multiple sociotechnical imaginaries within asymmetric power dynamics, with the vision of ensuring consumer trust rising as prominent at the expense of viewing data privacy as a sovereign right of citizens. Despite the emerging perspective of viewing data privacy as a right, CNN, as a significant place of mediation, has amplified rather than challenged the market-based approach. Lastly, evidence indicates that media is not only a significant place for elevating certain sociotechnical imaginaries but could be considered one of the crucial places of initially discursively negotiated policymaking.

La pandémie de la COVID-19, dont les effets se font ressentir à partir de la fin de l’année 2019, domine toutes les dimensions de la vie dans le monde entier. La communauté internationale à travers l’OMS incite les pays à se confiner, compte tenu du nombre de cas et de morts en augmentation. Malgré la découverte des vaccins, l’isolement et le confinement se poursuivent. La COVID-19 a également d’importantes conséquences sur la vie professionnelle. Pour nombre de groupes professionnels, la crise sanitaire se traduit par une adaptation à cette nouvelle forme de travail. Le confinement entraîne la mise en place de modes de travail inhabituels comme le télétravail auquel la plupart des cadres professionnels n’était pas préparée. La structure hybride du télétravail risque de réduire les frontières entre la vie professionnelle et la vie privée et de menacer le droit à la vie privée. Il est incontestable que la COVID-19 a aussi des impacts profonds sur les manières de travailler des professionnels d’information. Notre étude vise à obtenir une meilleure compréhension des effets du télétravail en confinement sur les services et les bibliothécaires de référence des bibliothèques universitaires dans la période pandémique en Turquie. Dans cette étude quantitative, la méthode privilégiée était l’enquête par questionnaire en ligne. Selon les données que nous avons collectées par l’intermédiaire d’un questionnaire en ligne, nous avons constaté que le télétravail en confinement estompait les frontières entre la sphère professionnelle et la sphère privée des bibliothécaires de référence surtout avec enfant(s) ou en couple. Cette étude nous a également permis de déterminer les types de services de référence et les ressources, surtout numériques, pour offrir ce service. Elle nous a aidé aussi à évaluer les effets des facteurs comme le genre et l’infrastructure technologique, et à voir à quel niveau le domicile convenait pour ce type de travail. Selon nous, les résultats de cette recherche pourraient être révélateurs pour déterminer la feuille de route dans ce processus. Aussi, notre étude contribuera à combler les manques dans ce domaine et à identifier des pistes de réflexion pour les recherches futures. / The COVID-19 pandemic whose effects have been felt from the end of 2019, has dominated all aspects of public life across the globe. International community through the WHO incite countries to lock down because of the increasing number of cases and deaths. Despite the discovery of vaccines, isolation and lockdown continue. The global spread of the coronavirus has significant consequences on professional life. For many professionals, this health crisis resulted in adaptation to a new form of working. The lockdown introduced new and unusual ways of working like telecommuting for whom most of the professionals were not prepared. Hybrid structure of telecommuting could reduce boundaries between professional and personal life and threaten right to privacy. There is compelling evidence that COVID-19 has also deep impacts on the way that information professionals work. Our study aimed at understanding the effects of telecommuting on private sphere, and changes in reference services offered by university librarians during pandemic in Turkey. Our studies show the consequences of social distancing on reference services, which normally necessitate a proximity between librarian and user, and how telecommuting during the lockdown blur boundaries between professional and private sphere. In the “new normal”, private sphere is a hybrid space which includes both spheres. The method that we have adopted was online questionnaire survey to obtain a portrait of the impacts of telecommuting during the lockdown on references services and on reference librarians who are working at university libraries in Turkey. In our opinion, our study would fill the lack in this field and contribute to adopt measures especially for the future. Using data provided by an Internet-based survey questionnaire, our study aimed also aimed at grasping new definitions of work introduced by the “new normal” and at observing the effects of new professional perspectives on information sciences and especially on reference librarians in Turkey. Also, this study helped us to understand changes in factors like gender, social divide, and private life in this unprecedented period. In our opinion, the results of this study could be revealing to determine the roadmap in this process.