Washington Law Review Volume 93 Number 2 6-1-2018 Privacy in the Cloud: The Fourth Amendment Fog Sarah Aitchison Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr Part of the Fourth Amendment Commons, and the Privacy Law Commons Recommended Citation Sarah Aitchison, Comment, Privacy in the Cloud: The Fourth Amendment Fog, 93 Wash. L. Rev. 1019 (2018). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol93/iss2/9 This Comment is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Reviews and Journals at UW Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington Law Review by an authorized editor of UW Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Aitchison (Do Not Delete) 6/6/2018 9:41 PM PRIVACY IN THE CLOUD: THE FOURTH AMENDMENT FOG Sarah Aitchison* Abstract: The Cloud has changed how individuals record, store, and aggregate their personal information. As technology’s capacity for holding an individual’s most intimate details and recording day-to-day experiences increases, Fourth Amendment privacy protections become less equipped to respond to technological advances. These advances allow private companies to store an immense amount of their consumers’ personal information, and government entities to obtain that information. In response, tech companies have begun refusing to comply with government demands for information collected and stored in their devices and in the Cloud, and are increasingly ending up in court, fighting orders to disclose consumer information. A dynamic tension has developed between the United States government’s desire and increased capacity to obtain information about consumers, and tech companies wanting to keep their consumers’ information private.