Defendant left his computer open for Internet access for peer to peer access to download files, and this did not show he maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy in his computer. Moreover, there was probable cause for issuance of a search warrant off those entries into the computer. United States v. Stults, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81975 (D. Neb. November 2, 2007):
In his supplemental motion to suppress, Stults argues government agents illegally searched his computer prior to the issuance of the search warrant and used such information to establish probable cause for the issuance of the search warrant. Stults contends Agent Cecchini conducted a warrantless search when he viewed the files from IP address 24.252.31.129 (Stults’s IP address) after Agent Cecchini launched the P2P program searching for child pornography. Stults argues Agent Cecchini was able to determine the contents of Stults’s computer, retrieve files from Stults’s computer, and view those files at a distant location without Stults’s consent. Stults asserts without such information, there would be insufficient probable cause to obtain a search warrant of Stults’s premises or computer files.
The application and affidavit detail the workings of a P2P network and that of Limewire which was used in this instance. The application and affidavit set forth how Agent Cecchini accessed the P2P network, noted the downloads of various files by IP address 24.252.31.129, and then downloaded those particular files from the P2P network for viewing. The P2P network is a file sharing network that belies a reasonable expectation of privacy. Absent such an expectation, the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit law enforcement officers accessing the P2P network and viewing files that have been downloaded by various IP addresses. Stults’s assertion that Agent Cecchini’s actions amounted to a warrantless search tainting the application and affidavit is without merit.
In a qualified immunity analysis, the question is not probable cause; it is arguable probable cause, and here there was not, so qualified immunity is no protection. Defendants’ argument of exigency also fails because they had three hours to procure a warrant. Barnette v. City of Phenix City, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 82300 (M.D. Ala. November 6, 2007).*
Plaintiff was taken down by the officer when he refused arrest, and this was not excessive force because he was resisting. Cardinal v. Allain, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81862 (M.D. La. November 5, 2007):
Deputy Balcuns used a straight arm bar take down tactic to bring Mr. Cardinal to the ground. Such a tactic was not excessive force because Mr. Cardinal was jerking way from Deputy Balcuns to prevent Deputy Balcuns from handcuffing him. In addition, when Deputy Balcuns made a second attempt to handcuff Mr. Cardinal, Plaintiff again responded by jerking away and pushing Deputy Balcuns. It was Mr. Cardinal’s conduct and intoxicated state which created the situation at issue.
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"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, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"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]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"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)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
