Professor Clark D. Cunningham, W. Lee Burge Chair in Law & Ethics
Director, National Institute for Teaching Ethics & Professionalism
Georgia State University College of Law Atlanta, Georgia
Articles for The Conversation
The Conversation is a non-profit educational entity, established to provide an independent and open-access source of news and views from the academic and research community, curated by professional editors, delivered direct to the public. Articles are only published from authors who have proven expertise on the subject addressed. The Conversation features articles from experts at 2025 universities and research institutes—from around the world. Funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,
Clark D. Cunningham, Restoring transparency and fairness to the FBI investigation of Clinton emails, The Conversation (Oct. 31, 2016)
https://theconversation.com/restoring-transparency-and-fairness-to-the-fbi-investigation-of-clinton-emails-67967
Republications include:
www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-us/restoring-transparency-an_b_12746480.html
bigstory.ap.org/article/358c8b1596af4054aa7f00fba9a052b9/restoring-transparency-and-fairness-fbi-investigation
www.rawstory.com/2016/11/restoring-transparency-and-fairness-to-the-fbi-investigation-of-clinton-emails/
16,000+ readers as of August 6, 2017
Clark D. Cunningham, In getting ‘new’ Clinton emails, did the FBI violate the Constitution?, The Conversation (Oct. 29, 2016)
https://theconversation.com/in-getting-new-clinton-emails-did-the-fbi-violate-the-constitution-67906
Republications include:
www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-us/in-getting-new-clinton-em_b_12713842.html
www.rawstory.com/2016/10/in-getting-the-new-clinton-emails-did-the-fbi-violate-the-constitution/
107,900+ readers as of August 6, 2017
Clark D. Cunningham, Feds: We can read all your email, and you’ll never know, The Conversation (Sep. 21, 2016)
https://theconversation.com/feds-we-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know-65620
Republications include:
newrepublic.com/article/137027/feds-can-read-email-youd-never-know
www.salon.com/2016/09/22/when-the-hackers-are-the-feds-the-government-may-be-reading-your-emails-without-you-ever-knowing-about-it/
www.rawstory.com/2016/09/feds-we-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know/
www.upi.com/Top_News/Opinion/2016/09/22/Feds-We-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know/3611474554449/
bigstory.ap.org/article/1b485389d3c842e1ae8ca353ca14cc2f/feds-we-can-read-all-your-email-and-youll-never-know
101,200+ readers as of August 6, 2017
The Conversation essays published in September and October 2016 draw on research published in
Clark D. Cunningham, Apple and the American Revolution: Remembering Why We Have the Fourth Amendment, 126 Yale Law Journal Forum 218 (Oct. 26, 2016)
www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/apple-and-the-american-revolution-remembering-why-we-have-the-fourth-amendment-1
This article provides a concise history of events prior to the Revolutionary War that led to the adoption of the Fourth Amendment and relates that history to current controversies over the use of search warrants to obtain electronically stored information from cell phones and email accounts in the cloud, in particular the FBI’s attempt to get court orders forcing Apple to create and give to the government software eliminating the user privacy and security features of the iPhone and the pending Microsoft lawsuit against the Department of Justice challenging email search gag orders. Compelling comparisons are drawn between the infamous Lord Halifax general warrants used in 1763 to seize all of a suspect’s private papers and search them for evidence of seditious libel and warrants currently used by the federal government to seize the entire contents of a cell phone or of a cloud account and then conduct review of every item of digital data. The essay concludes with legislative proposals to extend existing statutory safeguards for wiretapping and electronic surveillance to search warrants for electronically stored information, and provide notice and a right to a hearing before such warrants are executed.
Professor Cunningham has created a companion website of reference materials on the FBI v Apple controversy, the Microsoft v DOJ lawsuit, other related cases, and Congressional initiatives regarding searches of electronically stored information: www.clarkcunningham.org/Apple/.