The U.S. Supreme Court decision last week in Carpenter v. United States will shape the relationship consumers have with their wireless devices and the services they use every day for years to come. In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that by obtaining cell-site records, the U.S. government performed a search. By doing so without a warrant, this search was judged unconstitutional, violating petitioner Timothy Carpenter’s Fourth Amendment rights and reversing two previous decisions.
NCL Public Policy Intern Melissa Cuddington contributed to this post.
In November 22, 2004, Automotive News, the publication that covers the auto industry, ran one of my favorite editorials of all time:
“All safety related devices should become standard equipment on all vehicles. No choice. It’s not an economic decision; it’s a moral decision. When the choice becomes profit vs. lives, the decision should be simple.”
Earlier this spring, the Trump Administration announced plans to follow up its tariffs on imported steel and aluminum with 25 percent tariffs on approximately $60 billion worth of imports from China. News about a potential “hold” notwithstanding, one area that hasn’t gotten enough attention is the impact of these potential tariffs on the digital divide generally, and low-income consumers and communities of color specifically.
Last year, we examined whether the growth of ad blocking was partly a logical response to consumers’ desire to reduce their data security risk. The catalyst for that blog post was Google’s announcement that it intended to include ad filtering-by-default in its Chrome browser, the most popular browser on the market. Earlier this year, that promise became a reality as Google rolled out an update to Chrome that included the ad filtering function.
You walk into your favorite grocery store, proceeding down each aisle with your shopping list in hand. Can you imagine a world in which the cereal aisle is in conversation with you, instead of yelling at you, the way it seems to these days? Where the bright colors and endless rows of loudly-labeled boxes calm, not overwhelm you? Would that make you feel more confident in your granola of choice?