A child pornography investigator’s use of the “Wyoming Tool Kit” that searches for and finds child porn on a computer connected peer-to-peer by locating hash (SHA) values of known child porn images does not violate some other expectation of privacy. State v. Dunham, 111 So. 3d 1095 (La. App. 1 Cir. 2012):
The issues presented in the defendant’s brief were recently addressed by the Third Circuit in a factually similar case, State v. Daigle, 2011-1209 (La. App. 3d Cir. 5/2/12), 93 So.3d 657. In Daigle, Louisiana State Police detectives conducted an investigation using the Wyoming Tool Kit and discovered the defendant’s IP address was seen with SHA values consistent with child pornography. At trial, the detectives explained that the Wyoming Tool Kit was designed by the Wyoming Department of Justice and ran on the Gnutella network. According to the detectives, software such as LimeWire and BearShare also ran on the Gnutella network. The Wyoming Tool Kit identified IP addresses that had SHA values matching images previously identified as child pornography. Daigle, 93 So.3d at 659-60. The detectives used GNU Watch in addition to the Wyoming Tool Kit, and testified that both programs only ran on the Gnutella network. Id. at 663. Citing several recent federal court decisions, the court found that in applying for a search warrant, the detective did not violate any reasonable expectation of privacy on defendant’s part by using software available only to law enforcement to identify defendant’s IP address as having SHA values that might be associated with images of child pornography. It explained:
Federal courts have examined the issues presented in Defendant’s appeal and have determined that defendants have no Fourth Amendment privacy rights in computer files that they have shared on file sharing networks such as Gnutella regardless of whether the defendants have logged onto the Gnutella network through clients such as Lime[W]ire, Morpheus, BearShare, or Shareaza. …. This is equally true if the investigating law enforcement officer uses software specially modified to screen for child pornography, such as ShareazaLE or the Wyoming Tool Kit, provided that the software has no greater access to the defendants’ computer files than that available to any other Gnutella client. Gabel, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 107131, 2010 WL 3927697; United States v. Borowy, 595 F.3d 1045 (9th Cir. 2010) [per curiam], …
Daigle, 93 So.3d at 665.
We agree with third circuit’s reasoning and find that Tpr. Sandifer did not violate the defendant’s right to privacy by using GNU Watch to examine the SHA values for files the defendant had already elected to freely share with other LimeWire users. Moreover, the defendant offered no evidence at trial in support of his assertion that publicly available programs are unable to obtain the SHA values of files on LimeWire, and the record does not support that argument. Therefore, the defendant’s arguments related to the alleged violation of his right of privacy are without merit.
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Defense counsel overlooked a valid motion to suppress, and that’s prejudice. Conviction reversed and remanded. A motion was filed, but denied by the trial court as untimely. [Why couldn’t the trial court see this coming?] State v. Hollie, 2013 Iowa App. LEXIS 707 (June 26, 2013).
Defense counsel did not file a motion to suppress that would have been meritless under the automobile exception, so there was no duty to file one. Caldwell v. State, 2013 Iowa App. LEXIS 669 (June 26, 2013).
As defendant was being pulled over for a taillight infraction, “McCoy made a furtive movement toward the center console as he stopped his car, a movement that was captured on a police recording of the incident.” When the officer looked in the car there were marijuana seeds scattered about. Defendant said they were left over from a previous drug arrest in the car. There was probable cause to search the car. State v. McCoy, 2013 Iowa App. LEXIS 674 (June 26, 2013).*
A CI (probably a citizen informant) reported likely hand-to-hand drug sales occurring out of a described car in front of a Radio Shack. The car was found and that was sufficient information for the officers to encounter the occupants. State v. Hill, 2013 Iowa App. LEXIS 698 (June 26, 2013).*
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Defendant was pulled over as a possible “tired or impaired driver.” During the stop, however, it was apparent defendant was neither. Dragging out the stop to ask for consent made it unreasonable. State v. Mass, 2013 Iowa App. LEXIS 705 (June 26, 2013):
New Jersey lawmakers, on Friday, joined 42 other state legislatures in drafting laws to prevent the use of unmanned aerial drones. Members of the New Jersey state Senate unanimously approved a slate of restrictions on the use of aerial drones by local law enforcement and emergency services. The legislation, passed on a vote of 36 to 0, would not ban the use of unmanned aircraft outright, according to local news reports.
FBI Director Robert Mueller finally admitted that the Bureau uses drones to carry out surveillance on Americans (say hi!). Meanwhile, the tweens next door are probably spying on you too, watching you pick your nose using a $300 drone they bought on Amazon. UAV use in America—and public anxiety over it—is exploding. And Domestic Drone Countermeasures, an anti-drone technology startup, is building a business around it.
Ratcheting up the rhetoric over New York City’s stop-and-frisk police practices, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Friday that the Police Department stopped white people too frequently, and nonwhites not frequently enough, in investigating murder suspects.
Over the objections of the mayor and police commissioner, the New York City Council early Thursday morning approved by veto-proof majorities a pair of bills aimed at increasing oversight of the Police Department and expanding New Yorkers’ ability to sue over racial profiling by officers.
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Rarity: Testimony of PO at a Franks hearing is deemed too incredible to be believed. United States v. Guzman-Batista, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88451 (D. P.R. April 11, 2013). The details are omitted:
Gatekeeper program that acts as a pen register on computers and captures the “handshake” information about IP addresses and “payload” without capturing any content, including any keywords, is not a Fourth Amendment search. United States v. Saville, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 89281 (D. Mont. May 20, 2013):
Citizens followed a bank robbery suspect for 15 minutes and lost him. Police got a line on where to look, and an officer entered the backyard of defendant’s property, open off an alley, and saw the car. This was 30 minutes after the robbery, so it was not hot pursuit. The court and Sixth Circuit had previously found the entry into the back yard a Fourth Amendment violation of the curtilage, but it was objectively reasonable under all the circumstances, and the exclusionary rule would not be applied. United States v. Fugate, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 89182 (S.D. Ohio June 24, 2013):
RIP mistake of law as no good faith. Indiana upholds a stop based on a reasonable but mistaken view of the window tint law purely on good faith. Sanders v. State, 2013 Ind. LEXIS 474 (June 25, 2013):
A defendant who denied living in an apartment at the time of a search did not waive his reasonable expectation of privacy in the apartment where he actually paid the rent. A ruse to get defendant to open the door of the apartment did not violate the Fourth Amendment. It would have if the ruse led to consent, but this one didn’t. People v. Nelson, 2012 COA 37M, 296 P.3d 177 (Colo. App. 2012).
“[W]e need not conduct the balancing test for an Article 1, Section 11 determination because the manager of the motel evicted Harper immediately upon his arrest and then gave officers permission to search the room.” Harper v. State, 963 N.E.2d 653 (Ind. App. 2012).*
Defendant consented after he was told he was free to go. His prior possession offenses made the officer “curious.” McLain v. State, 963 N.E.2d 662 (Ind. App. 2012).*
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Arkansas Business: Truck Driver Hair Testing Moves Forward at J.B. Hunt by Chris Bahn. One of the nation’s largest trucking companies drug tests the hair of its drivers. The government prefers UAs; trucking companies prefer hair testing.
"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.
