Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf
Page Number: 100.0

2 

CARPENTER v. UNITED STATES 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

expects any of it will be kept private.  But no one believes 
that, if they ever did.

What to do?  It seems to me we could respond in at least 
three  ways.    The  first  is  to  ignore  the  problem,  maintain 
Smith  and  Miller,  and  live  with  the  consequences.    If  the 
confluence  of  these  decisions  and  modern  technology
means our Fourth Amendment rights are reduced to nearly 
nothing,  so  be  it.    The  second  choice  is  to  set  Smith  and 
Miller  aside  and  try  again  using  the  Katz  “reasonable 
expectation of privacy” jurisprudence that produced them. 
The third is to look for answers elsewhere. 

* 
Start with the first option.  Smith held that the govern-
ment’s use of a pen register to record the numbers people
dial on their phones doesn’t infringe a reasonable expecta-
tion of privacy because that information is freely disclosed 
to the third party phone company.  442 U. S., at 743–744. 
Miller  held  that  a  bank  account  holder  enjoys  no  reason- 
able  expectation  of  privacy  in  the  bank’s  records  of  his
account activity.  That’s true, the Court reasoned, “even if 
the information is revealed on the assumption that it will 
be  used  only  for  a  limited  purpose  and  the  confidence
placed in the third party will not be betrayed.”  425 U. S., 
at  443.  Today  the  Court  suggests  that  Smith  and  Miller 
distinguish between kinds of information disclosed to third 
parties  and  require  courts  to  decide  whether  to  “extend”
those  decisions  to  particular  classes  of  information,  de-
pending  on  their  sensitivity.  See  ante,  at  10–18.    But  as 
the  Sixth  Circuit  recognized  and  JUSTICE  KENNEDY  ex-
plains,  no  balancing  test  of  this  kind  can  be  found  in 
Smith  and  Miller.  See  ante,  at  16  (dissenting  opinion).
Those  cases  announced  a  categorical  rule:  Once  you  dis-
close  information  to  third  parties,  you  forfeit  any  reason- 
able expectation of privacy you might have had in it.  And 
even  if  Smith  and  Miller  did  permit  courts  to  conduct  a