NYT Bits: Using E-Mail Data to Connect the Dots of Your Life by Brian X. Chen, halfway in:

Continue reading →

NYT: In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. by Eric Lichtblau:

Continue reading →

Community caretaking function justified officer opening door to car to awaken a sleeping driver to see what was wrong. State v. Lowe, 2013 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 581 (July 5, 2013):

Continue reading →

United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745, 756, 91 S. Ct. 1122, 28 L. Ed. 2d 453 (1971), Douglas, J., dissenting:

Continue reading →

Stephen E. Henderson, Real-Time and Historic Location Surveillance after United States v. Jones: An Administrable, Mildly Mosaic Approach, 103 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 103 (2013):

Continue reading →

ABCNews 2006: NSA’s Phone-Call Program Meets Mixed Reactions (May 12, 2006):

Continue reading →

A writ of prohibition is not a proper remedy to object to a search warrant. Here, the police got a search warrant for medical records from a hospital 12 days after a shooting victim was treated. State ex rel. Parma Cmty. Gen. Hosp., 2013 Ohio 2923, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 2969 (8th Dist. July 1, 2013):

Continue reading →

Wired: Encryption Has Foiled Wiretaps for First Time Ever, Feds Say By David Kravets:

Continue reading →

NPR Morning Edition: NSA’s Reach Leads To Calls For Updated Eavesdropping Laws by Tom Bowman

ABAJ.com: How did America’s police become a military force on the streets? by Radley Balko:

Continue reading →

School officials accessing plaintiff’s Twitter postings didn’t violate the First or Fourth Amendments. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in Twitter postings. Roasio v. Clark County School District, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 93963 (D. Nev. July 3, 2013):

Continue reading →

BBC: France ‘has vast data surveillance’:

France’s foreign intelligence service intercepts computer and telephone data on a vast scale, like the controversial US Prism programme, according to the French daily Le Monde.

The data is stored on a supercomputer at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence service, the paper says. The operation is “outside the law, and beyond any proper supervision”, Le Monde says. Other French intelligence agencies allegedly access the data secretly.

. . .

The UK spy agency GCHQ is reported to run a similarly vast data collection operation, co-operating closely with the NSA.

Everybody is spying on everybody.

NJ grants a petition for certification on whether a suspect’s objection to a search is still binding on state after they remove him so they can ask somebody else for consent. That is, can the state overcome Randolph by removing the objector? State v. Lamb, 213 N.J. 531, 65 A.3d 259 (2013):

It is ORDERED that the petition for certification is granted limited to the issue of whether consent by an occupant to search premises is constitutionally effective against a third party when an absent co-tenant has objected to the search.

The appellate court thought so: State v. Lamb, 2012 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1521 (June 28, 2012) (unpublished):

Defendant also argues that even if Karen Marcus’s consent were knowing and voluntary, it was ineffective because Steven Marcus had already denied police permission to enter. We disagree.

We recognize that a co-occupant’s consent is ineffective when it is countered by the contemporaneous refusal of another co-occupant, who is physically present and is the target of the police investigation. Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 120, 126 S. Ct. 1515, 1526, 164 L. Ed. 2d 208, 226 (2006). “We therefore hold that a warrantless search of a shared dwelling for evidence over the express refusal of consent by a physically present resident cannot be justified as reasonable as to him on the basis of consent given to the police by another resident.” Ibid. (emphasis added). However, the Supreme Court did not address the situation posed here — “the constitutionality of a search as to a third tenant [in this case, defendant Lamb] against whom the government wishes to use evidence seized after a search with consent of one co-tenant subject to the contemporaneous objection of another[.]” Id. at 120 n. 8, 126 S. Ct. at 1526, 164 L. Ed. 2d at 226.

Steven Marcus’s objections also did not negate Karen Marcus’s consent; he was no longer present, his refusal no longer contemporaneous, and there was no finding that he was removed for the sake of avoiding his objection. See Id. at 121, 126 S. Ct. at 1527, 164 L. Ed. 2d at 226-27 (consent of one co-occupant not ineffective “[s]o long as there is no evidence that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection”). See also United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 170, 94 S. Ct. 988, 993, 39 L. Ed. 2d 242, 249 (1974) (“[T]he consent of one who possesses common authority over premises or effects is valid as against the absent, nonconsenting person with whom that authority is shared.”) (emphasis added).

Defendant was an airman who was believed by his landlord to have skipped out on rent and abandoned the premises. He wasn’t around and couldn’t be found. The landlord entered and found it needed a lot of repairs and appeared abandoned. He called defendant’s NCOs who came to the apartment as Air Force representatives to the community to see what was going on. The landlord unquestionably had a right of entry under the lease, and this extended to making the NCOs his “representative.” They did not enter for any regulatory or law enforcement function. In the apartment, they found a piece of a B-1 bomber that was missing from the air base. The entry was valid. United States v. Irizarry, 72 M.J. 100 (C.A. A.F. 2013):

Continue reading →

21st Century Mail Cover: NYT: U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement by Ron Nixon:

Continue reading →

Cato: Botched Paramilitary Police Raids (interactive map)

“If a widespread pattern of [knock-and-announce] violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern.”
—Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006.

An interactive map of botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids, released in conjunction with the Cato policy paper “Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids,” by Radley Balko

[There is, Justice Kennedy, but your Court is too obtuse to realize it. McClesky v. Kemp and the Harris drug dog case prove that to me.]

One male defendant effectively consented to a search of a woman’s purse. When consent was asked for, he indicated the purse. He was asked again “this purse,” and he nodded. This amounted to apparent authority to consent. It seemed to be defendant’s. “We admit some question exists on this record as to the ownership of the bag/purse. But ultimately, that does not matter. Hull consistently refers to the bag as his in his brief and did not disclaim ownership of the bag in the District Court. The Government, in its brief, labels the purse as belonging to Hull’s girlfriend, and later, confusingly claims the District Court determined the purse belonged to Hull’s girlfriend.” United States v. Walker, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 13391 (3d Cir. June 26, 2013) (citing the Urban Dictionary on “murse”–a man’s purse).

Defendant’s mother could consent to a search of her adult son’s room when both were present, the police never asked him, and he objected to her, not them, saying “mommy, don’t do it.” United States v. DeAlba, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91960 (D. Nev. July 1, 2013), R&R 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91958 (D. Nev. April 12, 2013).

NYT: What the N.S.A. Knows About You by Juliet Lapidos:

Continue reading →

When there was a search warrant for an automobile, the police seized the GPS in the vehicle not named in the search warrant because it was logical that the GPS would be able to provide information about defendant’s movements. United States v. Anyanwu, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 92175 (N.D. Ga. May 15, 2013):

Continue reading →

arstechnia.com: Cops shouldn’t have easy access to 220+ days of cell location data, lawyers say by Cyrus Farivar:

Continue reading →