5th Circuit: 'Reasonable Expectation of Privacy' Applies to Cloud Storage
A court ruled on Wednesday that the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, applies to information stored online, and that people can have a reasonable expectation of privacy concerning information stored in files on the internet.
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In case 23-50303, on appeal from the U.S. District Court for Western Texas, pro-life organization The Heidi Group alleged that Texas officials violated state law and the Fourth Amendment when they conspired with a private citizen and stole documents from its cloud-based file storage system.
A former Heidi employee had alerted state investigators that she retained access to the organization's Dropbox account. The investigators then urged her to examine files in the Dropbox, according to law professor Orin Kerr in a series of BlueSky posts. When Heidi realized someone had unauthorized access to its files, it sued the state officials for violating the Fourth Amendment.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the former employee's access to the Dropbox account counted as state action for a Fourth Amendment claim, which Kerr said was the "correct ruling, in my view."
The court also ruled that Heidi's previous role as a state contractor did not eliminate its Fourth Amendment rights, and that accessing information by an outside entity was a Fourth Amendment "search," violating the organization's rights.