We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE STORED COMMUNICATIONS ACT: TRANSLATING THE STATUTORY BAR ON DISCLOSURE OF PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS FROM CIVIL TO CRIMINAL DISCOVERY.
- Authors
Korol, Michelle
- Abstract
The Stored Communications Act (SCA) is a federal statute that protects internet users from having their private online communications wrongfully disclosed by the providers that facilitate and store this information. Since 1986, courts have struggled to apply the proverbial "square peg" of the SCA's framework to the "round hole" of an everevolving internet world. The emergence of social media presented a new challenge for the courts. As of 2010, the SCA's protections have applied, in civil litigation, to information housed on various social media sites. But courts have only recently begun to grapple with the SCA's scope in relation to discovery in criminal prosecutions. In 2020, the California Supreme Court left open the question of whether a criminal defendant's constitutional rights permit that defendant to compel social media communications during his pretrial investigation where the SCA does not. This Note argues that a criminal defendant does not have a right--under the SCA, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, or otherwise--to private, third-party social media communications in pretrial discovery. When the California Supreme Court litigates this issue, it should hold that the SCA's bar on a criminal defendant's ability to compel the disclosure of such communications from providers is not unconstitutional.
- Subjects
SOCIAL media laws; INTERNET censorship; INFORMATION filtering; INTERNET content regulation; CALIFORNIA. Supreme Court
- Publication
Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 2022, Vol 55, Issue 3, p927
- ISSN
0147-9857
- Publication type
Article