Alan Zachary Rozenshtein
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About Alan
Rozenshtein explores how digital technology shapes law and legal institutions, and vice versa, with a focus on constitutional law, administrative law, and criminal procedure. Overarching themes in Rozenshtein's writing include the effect of new technology on law-enforcement, foreign intelligence and national security agencies, and the relationship between the government and the technology sector.
Contributions
How to Think about Access by Law Enforcement to Encrypted Electronic Data
Publications
Explains how digital surveillance can be used to fight COVID-19 and other pandemics consistent with the law and in a way that safeguards privacy and civil liberties.
Argues that the debate over law-enforcement access t encrypted data has mischaracterized and underestimated its complexity, and that the issue is best characterized as a "wicked problem": a policy dilemma in which the goals are unclear and contested, the information is incomplete and fragmented, and the solutions are always provisional.
Argues that the constitutionality of electronic surveillance should be determined by the binary search/no-search distinction under the Fourth Amendment, but rather by a broader inquiry that asks whether the government's failure to obtain a warrant or establish probable cause was nevertheless "reasonable."
Offers a taxonomy of how large technology companies can constrain government surveillance, both on their own and by empowering other actors Argues that this phenomenon is normatively problematic to the extent that it frustrates government activity that is both legal and democratically legitimate.