WaPo: Google says it fought gag orders in WikiLeaks case by Ellen Nakashima and Julie Tate:
Google has fought all gag orders preventing it from telling customers that their e-mails and other data were sought by the U.S. government in a long-running investigation of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which published leaked diplomatic cables and military documents, an attorney representing the tech firm said this week.
NY Times: Drones Spotted, but Not Halted, Raise Concerns by Michael S. Schmidt and Michael D. Shear:
As Major League Baseball’s top players took the field at the All-Star Game in Minneapolis in July, a covert radar system scanned the sky above the 40,000-seat stadium for what security experts said was an emerging threat to public safety: drones.
“In the Eighth Circuit, for the purposes of determining whether probable cause exists to search a computer [for child pornography], an IP address assigned to a specific user at the time illegal internet activity associated with that IP address occurs is a sufficient basis to find a nexus between the unlawful use of the internet at that IP address and a computer possessed by the subscriber assigned the address.” United States v. Reibert, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9848 (D.Neb. January 27, 2015).*
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not challenging a “anytime” state search warrant under state law when the case was indicted federally because a violation of state law doesn’t translate into a federal violation. Danner v. United States, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 181245 (N.D.Ala. December 29, 2014).*
Defense counsel wasn’t ineffective for not appealing denial of the motion to suppress because, based on the whole record, including the trial, there was reasonable suspicion for the stop. State v. Goldsmith, 2015-Ohio-261, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 220 (5th Dist. January 15, 2015).*
“Casing” the premises from the street as a prelude to a knock-and-talk does not violate the curtilage. United States v. Lubrin, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9682 (D.V.I. January 28, 2015).
The officer had reasonable suspicion to continue the detention on the highway, and it was not unreasonable to put the defendant in the back of the police car during the dog sniff. State v. Stephenson, 2015-Ohio-233, 2015 Ohio App. LEXIS 200 (12th Dist. January 26, 2015).*
There was no plain error in the trial court’s holding on defendant’s arrest. This is not clearly a cite and release situation, as defendant admits, and it’s a case of first impression. (Essentially, if it’s of first impression, it’s not plain error.) State v. Pettie, 2015 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 59 (January 28, 2015).*
Plaintiff led officers on a high-speed chase on a motorcycle through two counties, at times reaching 110 mph. In a city, “[i]ndeed, the video shows that he covered the 4.8 miles between the intersections of Z-Horse Charters and South East Avenue B in just 3 minutes and 3 seconds—at a blur-inducing average speed of 94.43 mph.” He crashed and sued the officers for chasing him and lost. Willis v. Mock, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 1231 (11th Cir. January 27, 2015):
Continue reading
WaPo: The Watch: Fairfax police stage a SWAT raid on poker players by Radley Balko:
Playing cards could be dangerous. Better just stick to the lottery.
This minor’s § 1983 suit alleges a Fourth Amendment violation when she was taken to a hospital and subjected to a mental health examination based a report from a school friend that she had attempted to kill herself. The police officer who went to the home where she was staying and detained her until a county sheriff’s deputy arrived did not violate her constitutional rights because information that the minor was suicidal supported his decision to maintain custody for a short time. As to the deputy, who ordered the minor into his police car over her protests and those of her father, took her to the hospital against her will, and signed hospital forms with incorrect information, further development of the record was required to determine if the officer’s actions were objectively reasonable and whether the deputy was entitled to qualified immunity. Bruce v. Guernsey, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 1184 (7th Cir. January 26, 2015).
The Hill: Senators resurrect bill to require a warrant for email searches by Mario Trujillo
Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee plan to re-introduce legislation in the “coming weeks.”
Center for Democracy and Technology: Data Privacy Day: A Reminder of the Need to Update ECPA by Chris Calabrese:
For years CDT has been leading the charge to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the law that governs how police and government can access to our personal communications like emails and photos. We’ve consistently argued that these types of private communications should only be accessible with a warrant based on probable cause – the same standard used to search your postal mail or your home.
Today, Data Privacy Day, is a good day to talk about why. …
Roll Call: How Congress Can Protect Americans’ Email Privacy | Commentary by Gabe Rottman and Katie McAuliffe:
Did you lock your front door when you left for work this morning? Rest easy, then, knowing your papers are secure. But what about your emails? Not so much. Because right now, an outdated law threatens the Fourth Amendment protections of every American who uses the Internet. Whether you are a committee chairman or an unpaid intern, your digital privacy is currently at risk.
Wednesday is Data Privacy Day, and it’s as good a day as any to talk about the urgent unfinished task awaiting the new Congress — protecting Americans from unwarranted government intrusion into our private lives.
ICE raided and executed a search warrant on Soccer City in Albuquerque because of suspicion the operators were selling fake IDs. Defendant walked in carrying a box and he was accosted by the ICE agents and asked for his ID, too. They took it and ran it, and it came back that he’d been removed in the 1990s. He was charged with illegal entry after removal. His motion to suppress his ID and fingerprints was granted. The government relied on Michigan v. Summers and dealing with those who happen upon searches. While the initial encounter was consensual and he wasn’t blocked from leaving, keeping his ID too long made it a detention without reasonable suspicion. Delgado would make the initial stop valid, but there was no reason to continue as along as it did. Summers applies to the home when there is a drug warrant, not customers of a business when there is a fraud warrant. United States v. Lopez-Garcia, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 189297 (D.N.M. December 13, 2013):
Continue reading
The New Yorker: Letter from Albuquerque: Your Son Is Deceased by Rachel Aviv:
The city has one of the highest rates in the country of fatal shootings by police, but no officer has been indicted.
AP: Sheriffs want popular police-tracking app disabled by Eileen Sullivan:
Sheriffs are campaigning to pressure Google Inc. to turn off a feature on its Waze traffic software that warns drivers when police are nearby. They say one of the technology industry’s most popular mobile apps could put officers’ lives in danger from would-be police killers who can find where their targets are parked.
Wall Street Journal (subscription/registration required): U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars by Devlin Barrett:
The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to current and former officials and government documents.
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact / The Book
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online since Feb. 24, 2003
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Section 1983 Blog
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays
down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its
application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect
results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at
bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping
government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having
and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that
the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and
safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing
can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment.
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
—Pepé Le Pew
"There is never enough time, unless you are serving it."
—Malcolm Forbes
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
