Kindle Version of “The Digital Fourth Amendment” Is Now Available

I’m very pleased to say that the Kindle version of my new book, The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World, is now available for sale.  The print version comes out January 10th, but the electronic version is out today.

This is the first regular-audience book I have written—it’s about law, but I’ve targeted it for general audiences in addition to lawyers and other law types—and here’s the dust-jacket blurb:

When can the government read your email or monitor your web surfing? When can the police search your phone or copy your computer files? In the United States, the answers come from the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and its ban on ‘unreasonable searches and seizures.’

The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World takes the reader inside the legal world of how courts are interpreting the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. Computers, smartphones, and the Internet have transformed criminal investigations, and even a routine crime is likely to lead to digital evidence. But courts are struggling to apply old Fourth Amendment concepts to the new digital world. Mechanically applying old rules from physical investigations doesn’t make sense, as it often leads to dramatic expansions of government power just based on coincidences of computer design.

Written by a prominent law professor whose scholarship has often been relied on by courts in the field, The Digital Fourth Amendment shows how judges must craft new rules for the new world of digital evidence. It explains the challenges courts confront as they translate old protections to a new technological world, bringing the reader up to date on the latest cases and rulings. Informed by legal history and the latest technology, this book gives courts a blueprint for legal change with clear rules for courts to adopt to restore our constitutional rights in the computer age.

And here’s some advance praise for the book:

Orin Kerr is the nation’s leading expert on how to safeguard the Constitution’s guarantee of individual rights in a world of technological change unimaginable to the Framers. Everyone from journalists to Supreme Court justices turn to Kerr for clear-eyed, even-handed analysis, and this thoughtful book shows why. The Digital Fourth Amendment is a call to action for the Supreme Court to protect the Constitution’s guarantee of individual privacy. I expect this incisive guide will be invaluable to the justices as they chart the path forward. —Robert Barnes, former Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post

Orin Kerr is the law professor you wish you’d had-whether you’re a lawyer or not. His case to update our search and seizure laws in the era of iPhones and Snapchat is an illuminating and fun ride for nerds of all stripes! —Sarah Isgur, ABC News legal analyst and host of Advisory Opinions

Kerr is the most thoughtful and thought-provoking thinker we have about the Fourth Amendment. In clear and accessible language for non-lawyers, Kerr explains the notoriously uneven road the Supreme Court has travelled, and offers lucid ways out of the thicket caused by the digital revolution resulting in our most personal information being in the hands of big tech companies. —Andrew Weissmann, MSNBC legal analyst and former General Counsel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Ensuring that the law remains relevant in the face of rapidly changing technology is a complex and critically important topic-and this is especially true when it comes to the Fourth Amendment. In his insightful and nuanced new book, Orin Kerr, a preeminent scholar of this crucial constitutional provision, articulates a powerful, ultimately optimistic vision for maintaining the vitality of the Fourth Amendment in the digital age.— David Lat, founder of Original Jurisdiction

I’ll plan to put up some posts about the argument of the book and why I wrote it when we get closer to the official print publication date, but for now you can get the Kindle version if that’s your thing.

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