Government surveillance is ubiquitous in the United States and can range from the seemingly innocuous to intensely intrusive. Recently, the surveillance of protestors—such as those protesting against George Floyd’s murder by a police officer—has received widespread attention in the media and in activist circles, but has yet to be successfully challenged in the courts. Tower dumps, the acquisition of location data of cell phones connected to specific cell towers, are controversial law enforcement tools that can be used to identify demonstrators. This Comment argues that the insufficiency of Fourth Amendment protections for protesters being surveilled by government actors—by tactics such as tower dumps—can be solved by conducting independent First Amendment analyses. A multi-factor balancing test can assist the courts as they consider the scope and pervasiveness of technology such as tower dumps against the potential chilling effects on First Amendment-protected activity, providing a framework to assess the constitutionality of surveillance technology used during mass protests.

政府监视在美国无处不在，其范围从看似无害到极具侵入性。最近，对抗议者的监视——例如那些抗议乔治·弗洛伊德被警察谋杀的抗议者——受到了媒体和活动人士的广泛关注，但尚未在法庭上成功挑战。Tower dumps，即获取连接到特定手机信号塔的手机的位置数据，是一种有争议的执法工具，可用于识别示威者。该评论认为，第四修正案对受到政府行为者监视的抗议者的保护不足 - 通过塔倾倒之类的策略 - 可以通过进行独立的第一修正案分析来解决。