Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 43

16 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

KENNEDY, J., dissenting 

authorization—specifically,  GPS  surveillance  accurate 
within  50  to  100  feet.  Id.,  at  402403.  Even  assuming 
that  the  different  constitutional  principles  mentioned  in 
Knotts would apply in a case like Jones—a proposition the 
Court  was  careful  not  to  announce  in  Jones,  supra,  at 
412413—those  principles  are  inapplicable  here.  Cases 
like  this  one,  where  the  Government  uses  court-approved
compulsory process to obtain records owned and controlled
by  a  third  party,  are  governed  by  the  two  majority  opin-
ions in Miller and Smith. 

B 
The  Court  continues  its  analysis  by  misinterpreting 
Miller and Smith, and then it reaches the wrong outcome 
on these facts even under its flawed standard. 

The Court appears, in my respectful view, to read Miller 
and Smith  to establish a balancing test.  For each “quali-
tatively  different  category”  of  information,  the  Court 
suggests,  the  privacy  interests  at  stake  must  be  weighed 
against the fact that the information has been disclosed to 
a  third  party.    See  ante,  at  11,  1517.  When  the  privacy
interests are weighty enough to “overcome” the third-party
disclosure,  the  Fourth  Amendment’s  protections  apply.
See ante, at 17. 

That  is  an  untenable  reading  of  Miller  and  Smith.  As 
already  discussed,  the  fact  that  information  was  relin-
quished  to a  third  party  was  the  entire  basis  for  conclud-
ing that the defendants in those cases lacked a reasonable
expectation of privacy.  Miller and Smith do not establish 
the kind of category-by-category balancing the Court today 
prescribes.

But  suppose  the  Court  were  correct  to  say  that  Miller 
and  Smith  rest  on  so  imprecise  a  foundation.  Still  the 
Court errs, in my submission, when it concludes that cell-
site records implicate greater privacy interests—and thus
deserve  greater  Fourth  Amendment  protection—than