A mosaic, the artistic medium after which the doctrine is named
The mosaic theory is a legal doctrine in American courts for considering issues of information collection, government transparency, and search and seizure, especially in cases involving invasive or large-scale data collection by government entities. The theory takes its name from mosaic tile art: while an entire picture can be seen from a mosaic's tiles at a distance, no clear picture emerges from viewing a single tile in isolation. The mosaic theory calls for a cumulative understanding of data collection by law enforcement and analyzes searches "as a collective sequence of steps rather than individual steps."[1]
Although the doctrine was first used in cases about national security, five justices of the US Supreme Court authored concurring opinions supporting a new Fourth Amendment framework for judging whether or not an individual has been subjected to an unlawful search, in United States v. Jones. Under this framework, the US government's actions should be considered collectively rather than independently for determining whether or not the acts constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment. It requires that police action is considered "over time as a collective 'mosaic' of surveillance,"[1] and allows that cumulative mosaic to qualify as a protected Fourth Amendment search, even if the individual steps that contribute to the full picture do not reach that constitutional threshold in isolation.[2][3][4]
Critics of the Fourth Amendment use of mosaic theory argue that it is difficult to administer and inconsistent with other Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Proponents, on the other hand, argue that mosaic theory is a much-needed development in light of new technologies that allow law enforcement officers to collect large volumes of personal data with little effort. Human rights workers and legal scholars have been critical of how mosaic theory in national security cases undermines civil rights.[5][6] They argue that when government agencies claim that any scrap of information is part of a larger intelligence mosaic, those agencies get free rein to determine what of their work will be kept secret.[7] This method is used by American intelligence analysts.[8][5][9]
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^Bennardo, Christian (2017). "The Fourth Amendment, CSLI Tracking, and the Mosaic Theory". Fordham Law Review. 85: 2385–2416.
^"Commonwealth v. McCarthy". Justia US Law. 2020. Retrieved May 31, 2020.
^ abCite error: The named reference Goodwin2001 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference VanityFair2012-01 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference HuffingtonPost2009-03-14 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Cleveland2011-04-25 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference Wittes was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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