{"id":242,"date":"2019-02-16T14:42:03","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T19:42:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/aclr-online\/volume-56\/alexa-can-you-keep-a-secret-the-third-party-doctrine-in-the-age-of-the-smart-home\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:09:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:09:41","slug":"alexa-can-you-keep-a-secret-the-third-party-doctrine-in-the-age-of-the-smart-home","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/aclr-online\/volume-56\/alexa-can-you-keep-a-secret-the-third-party-doctrine-in-the-age-of-the-smart-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexa: Can You Keep a Secret? The Third-Party Doctrine in the Age of the Smart Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Under the Fourth Amendment, the home is a castle. It is the place where one may retreat and \u201cbe free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.\u201d It is afforded the highest level of protection. Not so with the smart home. In the home enhanced by artificial intelligence, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in data shared with third parties like Amazon. The third-party doctrine says there is no expectation of privacy in information voluntarily provided to others. The Fourth Amendment protects the right to be secure in one\u2019s person, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. In recent years, the Amendment has taken on new meaning. Today, we mail our DNA \u2013 the very essence of our persons \u2013 to 23andMe. We rely on Alexa in our houses, and her always-on microphone to make life easier. We store our papers and effects on the Cloud, in Gmail, and on Dropbox. Focusing on Alexa, this article will contend that the third-party doctrine no longer comports with the Fourth Amendment. Nixing the doctrine \u2013 and replacing it with robust privacy protections \u2013 is the only way forward.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/02\/56-O-Alexa-Can-You-Keep-a-Secret-The-Third-Party-Doctrine-in-the-Age-of-the-Smart-Home.pdf\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Under the Fourth Amendment, the home is a castle. It is the place where one may retreat and \u201cbe free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.\u201d It is afforded the highest level [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2928,"featured_media":0,"parent":240,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-242","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2928"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/242\/revisions\/550"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}