Marketplace Tech · Wednesday, July 8, 2026
Justice Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion, argued that digital data shared with third parties should be considered personal property, giving individuals control over it. This perspective suggests that the government would need a warrant to access this data, not just based on a reasonable expectation of privacy, but on a property interest.
“And Justice Gorsuch wrote kind of an interesting concurring opinion in which he made this distinction that he believed digital data is sort of tantamount to a person's effects, as described in the Fourth Amendment, that data is sort of someone's personal property, even though it's being collected by third parties.”
“Yes, so Justice Gorsuch, uh, offers a fascinating argument that our data, shared with third parties, is and should be considered our effect, like our property that we have control over.”