THINKING OUTSIDE THE BLACK BOX: How creative thinking turned an electronic safety tool into a criminal informant

Mary W. Craig, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law

Abstract

David Warren invented the Event Data Recorder, or black box, to help investigators determine the cause of airplane crashes. Soon the technology began making its way to railroads, trucks, and then passenger cars. Once EDRs were installed by automobile manufacturers beneath the passenger seat of personal vehicles, police began retrieving the boxes and their data, most of the time without first securing a warrant. This paper explains why none of the exceptions to the warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment apply to the EDR data, and why states should pass laws requiring warrants before retrieval of the data.