US federal judges discuss the intersection of emerging technology, AI with the legal system

Source Domain: iapp.org

As privacy and artificial intelligence litigation continue to mount in U.S. courts, a pair of federal judges acknowledged that the speed of technological advancement is outpacing society’s ability to effectively regulate it.

At the IAPP Global Summit 2026, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Chief Judge James Boasberg and U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts Judge Allison Burroughs discussed how their digital-related caseloads are becoming more complex as nuanced arguments emerge over alleged personal harms caused by technology.

According to Burroughs, U.S. citizens’ baseline protections against surveillance and illegal searches of their property are derived from the First and Fourth Amendments. Now, 250 years after the country’s founding, she said existing laws and constitutional protections implemented decades earlier are “not keeping up, never have kept up and never will keep up” with the speed of innovation.

One example is law enforcement’s authority to open pen registers that record the metadata of outgoing phone calls of surveillance targets and do not require a search warrant under the Fourth Amendment. However, Burroughs said the courts have interpreted the “pen register” statute to allow law enforcement to use the same criteria to tap cell towers to extrapolate user cellular data, which has fueled a legal debate over whether existing laws can be retrofitted to present-day technology, or if new legislation is required “for the sake of consistency.”

“The gap is getting bigger for two reasons,” Burroughs said. “One is that there’s so much more data stored electronically that if you even do a search on someone’s laptop, you’re going to get more data now than you used to get, and the other one is that there is so much more technology, there are just so many ways of gaining access to data.”