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Page Number: 114

16 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

are  concerned,  for  example,  individuals  can  enjoy  Fourth
Amendment protection without fee simple title.  Both the 
text of the Amendment and the common law rule support 
that  conclusion.  “People  call  a  house  ‘their’  home  when 
legal title is in the bank, when they rent it, and even when 
they merely occupy it rent free.”  Carter, 525 U. S., at 95– 
96  (Scalia,  J.,  concurring).  That  rule  derives  from  the 
common  law.  Oystead  v.  Shed,  13  Mass.  520,  523  (1816) 
(explaining, citing “[t]he very learned judges, Foster, Hale, 
and Coke,” that the law “would be as much disturbed by a
forcible  entry  to  arrest  a  boarder  or  a  servant,  who  had 
acquired,  by  contract,  express  or  implied,  a  right  to  enter
the house at all times, and to remain in it as long as they 
please,  as  if  the  object  were  to  arrest  the  master  of  the 
house or his children”).  That is why tenants and resident
family  members—though  they  have  no  legal  title—have
standing  to  complain  about  searches  of  the  houses  in
which they live.  Chapman v. United States, 365 U. S. 610, 
616–617 (1961), Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U. S. 543, 
548, n. 11 (1968). 

Another point seems equally true: just because you have 
to entrust a third party with your data doesn’t necessarily
mean  you  should  lose  all  Fourth  Amendment  protections 
in it.  Not infrequently one person comes into possession of 
someone  else’s  property  without  the  owner’s  consent. 
Think  of  the  finder  of  lost  goods  or  the  policeman  who 
impounds  a  car.  The  law  recognizes  that  the  goods  and
the  car  still  belong  to  their  true  owners,  for  “where  a 
person  comes  into  lawful  possession  of  the  personal  prop-
erty of another, even though there is no formal agreement 
between  the  property’s  owner  and  its  possessor,  the  pos-
sessor  will  become  a  constructive  bailee  when  justice  so 
requires.”  Christensen v. Hoover, 643 P. 2d 525, 529 (Colo.
1982)  (en  banc);  Laidlaw,  Principles  of  Bailment,  16  Cor-
nell  L.  Q.  286  (1931).  At  least  some  of  this  Court’s  deci-
sions  have  already  suggested  that  use  of  technology  is