Navigating the Carpenter Trap: AI Data and Privacy Concerns

The Moral Machine host Chris D. Warren interviews Morristown, New Jersey federal criminal defense attorney Ernesto Cerimele about the New York Times v. OpenAI lawsuit and Judge Wang’s May preservation order requiring OpenAI to retain all U.S. user-submitted materials. They argue the order’s scale (billions of users/chats) creates an unprecedented pool of private, potentially confidential AI chat logs, raising Fourth Amendment concerns under Carpenter and limits on the third-party doctrine for modern digital data. Cerimele discusses risks of general warrants, overbroad subpoenas, and law enforcement access to preserved logs revealing politics, health, relationships, and legal strategy. Proposed guardrails include search-warrant requirements, particularity (timeframes/keywords/topics), minimization akin to wiretap rules, filter teams for privilege, and stronger judicial oversight, citing New Jersey’s State v. Benoa suppressing an overbroad four-year phone search.Views expressed on Moral Machine are the author’s own and do not reflect those of the New Jersey Supreme Court Attorney Ethics Committee (District VI) or Falcon Rappaport & Berkman LLP.