Warscapes: Cryptogams & the NSA by John Sifton of Human Rights Watch:

The first thing I did after I heard about the highly classified NSA PRISM program two years ago was set up a proxy server in Peshawar to email me passages from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. A literary flight of fancy. I started sending back excerpts from Gerard Manley Hopkins poems.

The cantankerous Seymour Hersh was my inspiration. He had told me about the program in a clipped expletive-filled summary in the summer of 2011: “They’re scooping fucking everything, man! Phones, Internet, the whole works.”

NYT: Fears of National ID With Immigration Bill by Eric Lipton:

WASHINGTON — Driver’s license photographs and biographic information of most Americans would be accessible through an expanded Department of Homeland Security nationwide computer network if the immigration legislation pending before the Senate becomes law.

CNET: NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls by Declan McCullagh:

National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

When defendant was stopped, he read from an attorney’s card saying “I refuse to consent.” He was detained, and when he finally “consented,” it was involuntary. State v. Gogel, 2013 Iowa App. LEXIS 640 (June 12, 2013):

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Trial court’s findings suppressing the evidence were not supported by the record. It held there was “not one shred of evidence” from which an officer could apply the emergency exception. That was incorrect, and the case is remanded to reweigh the evidence. State v. Hendrix, 2013 Ohio 2430, 2013 Ohio App. LEXIS 2367 (9th Dist. June 12, 2013):

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Global Grind: Infringe On The Fourth, But Hands Off The Second: Constitutional Hypocrisy by Danielle DeAbreu

NPR: Source: Obama Considering Releasing NSA Court Order by Carrie Johnson

NPR has learned that the Obama administration, under pressure to lift a cloak of secrecy, is considering whether to declassify a court order that gives the National Security Agency the power to gather phone call record information on millions of Americans.

The document, known as a “primary order,” complements a shorter Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court document leaked to The Guardian newspaper earlier this month. That document revealed the U.S. government had been asking Verizon Business Network Services Inc. to turn over, on a daily basis, phone call records for its subscribers, for 90 days.

Defendant lived in a rooming house, and he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the attic storage shared with others. He could not deny others access to the area. State v. Pierre, 139 Conn. App. 116, 54 A.3d 1060 (2012).

Being asleep or passed out behind the wheel of a parked car on a motel parking lot with the motor running was reasonable suspicion of being under the influence. Defendant allegedly consented to a search of his car, and that included a locked safe box in the trunk. Either way, it would have been opened in an inventory. Two guns were found, and defendant was a convicted felon. An older state case said that closed containers could not be opened, but federal cases were contra, including Florida v. Wells. United States v. Ashmore, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159577 (E.D. Tenn. November 7, 2012).*

Bricks of heroin found “as plain as day” in an open change purse in the defendant’s car. All the factors for a plain view were clearly present. United States v. Jones, 503 Fed. Appx. 174 (3d Cir. 2012).*

The authorized driver of a rental car has standing. The stop was prolonged unreasonably because the officer for some reason refused to listen to the occupants that he was looking at the wrong rental agreement and questioning them about it. The consent thereafter was not voluntary. United States v. Ma, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 157247 (D. Mont. November 1, 2012).*

Plaintiff’s suit against the government is barred by his guilty plea which admits probable cause. Rankin v. United States, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 156034 (S.D. Miss. October 31, 2012).*

Plaintiff was on probation and had his person and car searched when he made a report. His § 1983 case was subject to Delaware’s two year SOL, and he filed outside the time. He knew that he was subjected to the search and what was taken, so it accrued then. Woodson v. Payton, 503 Fed. Appx. 110 (3d Cir. 2012).*

Breaking: eff.org: FISA court rejects catch-22 secrecy argument in FOIA case by Mark Rumold:

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HuffPo: Sean Hannity Displays Hypocrisy On NSA Surveillance (VIDEO) by Melissa Jeltsen:

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eff.org: The NSA’s Word Games Explained: How the Government Deceived Congress in the Debate over Surveillance Powers by Kurt Opsahl and Trevor Timm:

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NYT: Google Offers Some Detail About How It Transfers Data to the Government by Claire Cain Miller:

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A bankruptcy trustee is not acting as a government agent for Fourth Amendment purposes [a proposition I completely reject because they are agents of the government: the one bankruptcy hearing day I watched, the Bankruptcy Judge referred to them as “my trustees”; and see Taunt v. Barman (In re Barman), 252 B.R. 403, 412-13 (Bankr. E.D. Mich.2000)]. At any rate, the defendant was obligated as a person filing bankruptcy to list his assets under oath, and that was essentially a waiver of his expectation of privacy. He had a significantly reduced expectation of privacy in a cache of gold and silver which he failed to disclose on the bankruptcy that the trustee learned about, and the trustee could go looking for it. The court also notes that the bankrupt was a member of the “sovereign” movement. In re Bodeker, 2013 Bankr. LEXIS 2336 (Bankr. D. Mont. June 7, 2013):

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Under Florida v. Harris, the K-9 officer was the best person to testify whether he improperly cued the dog to alert. Viewing the video, he said he didn’t. The opinion of the expert who said he did cue the dog is rejected since it is based on the same two minute video because the expert didn’t have enough information to go on. United States v. Guyton, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79694 (E.D. La. April 16, 2013).*

Defendant lawyered up during his interrogation, but the police asked him questions about his watch and what hotel he was staying at. They got a search warrant for the hotel room. He doesn’t argue that the search should be suppressed because he identified where he was staying, and the police had a warrant. Therefore, the search was valid. United States v. Balde, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78336 (E.D. N.C. June 4, 2013).*

A DUI arrest supports a search incident of the vehicle. State v. Ewertz, 2013 Kan. App. LEXIS 51 (June 7, 2013).

Buffalo News: Racial disparities found in marijuana charges [in NYS] by Lou Michel:

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I’ve been watching the media run around with their hair on fire screaming that the Obama Administration has subverted the Fourth Amendment: First with the subpoenas to FoxNews and the NYTimes, and then with the revelation the NSA is sweeping up all the numbers dialed on Verizon. Hardly anybody writing about this has any sense of history or knowledge of the law. I’ve been saying this all along: This is perfectly legal under the Fourth Amendment. It is distasteful as hell, but it violates no law. (WaPo: Obama defends NSA’s sweeping surveillance: “President Obama says ‘nobody is listening to your telephone calls’ and that Congress has authorized the programs.”)

The Bush Administration had plans for all this to begin with, but then quickly came the opportunity for the USA PATRIOT Act. To paraphrase Justice Scalia during the Voting Rights Act argument, It’s against a Congressman’s interest because of a name like that? “Even the name of it is wonderful: The [Patriot] Act. Who is going to vote against that in the future?”.

The Patriot Act became law without any critical thought, and it made it carte blanche for government to gather information about us. Couple this with the information technology available over the last decade and the ability to store Brontobytes of data, and that we see now was inevitable. I’m not the slightest bit surprised. Nobody keeping up is surprised. (1984 was nearly 30 years ago.)

All this data collection is perfectly legal under pre-Patriot Act law and compounded by it. In 1976, the Supreme Court held in Miller v. United States that it did not violate the Fourth Amendment for the government to gather information from bank records of a depositor under investigation. In 1979, the Court held in Smith v. Maryland that it did not violate the Fourth Amendment for the government to put a pen register on a telephone to record only the numbers being dialed because the telephone call wasn’t recorded. That was, after all, all technology allowed at the time. Think of the NSA as one huge pen register.

Fast forward 34 years to today, and it has been widely known that the NSA has the ability to gather all the information off satellites without a warrant. (1998’s movie “Enemy of the State” was not off the mark.)

So, the subpoenas for phone records of journalists: perfectly legal. Congress has not seen fit to ever adopt a journalist shield law to help implement the First Amendment. They don’t have any standing to complain.

If you don’t like the privacy implications, Sen. Paul has proposed legislation to change it. First is the “Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act of 2013,” S. 1037 that would legislatively overrule Smith and Miller. Second is “A bill to stop the National Security Agency from spying on citizens of the United States,” S. 1121.

Then there is the question of legislation to revamp the hopelessly outmoded Stored Communications Act. The “Email Privacy Act,” H.R. 1852 is a start but never good enough.

What is Congress doing? Essentially nothing. Proposing a law with great fanfare is meaningless if it goes nowhere. I wrote my Senators about email privacy, so I figure they don’t care since they never wrote back. So, I haven’t bothered to write to them about Sen. Paul’s bills. Congress is too mired in gamesmanship to do their damned jobs of actually legislating in the public interest.

“We the people” are the boiling frog, and the water has started to boil. We started giving up our liberties long before Bush and Ashcroft sold the Patriot Act, and that was just raw exploitation of fear over any sense of history. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Ben Franklin, 1759 (or 1775 depending on the source).

Today’s computers and software make unlimited information gathering possible, and the information is there, waiting to be mined. Under law, all this is, quite regretfully, legal. There is infinite personal information about each of us out there, just waiting to be gathered up. Smith and Miller have outlived their usefulness, and they need to be legislatively overruled because this is just the first real public disclosure of what’s been going on for at least a decade. We don’t have time for SCOTUS to get around to it. And what if it doesn’t?

Now, what are we going to do about it? Complain, but sit on or wring our hands and do nothing? (The “collective national shrug”?) Write to your Senators so Sen. Paul’s bill will get to committee for a discussion. The committee hearings, I’m sure, will be entertaining. And, to Sens. Pryor and Boozman: Do something. What are you there for? Stop just taking up space.

Guest post by G. Jack King:

In a column published in today’s Guardian (U.K.) titled “This abuse of the Patriot Act must end,” U.S. Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner writes, “The administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Patriot Act says that it can. I disagree. I authored the Patriot Act, and this is an abuse of that law.”

Nice sentiment, but it’s not just misleading — it’s all false. Let me explain.

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Guardian: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance / The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows by Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras:

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Guardian.co.uk: Boundless informant: the NSA’s secret tool to track global surveillance data / Revealed: The NSA’s powerful tool for cataloguing global surveillance data – including figures on US by Glenn Greenwald and Ewan Mackaskill:

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Plaintiff in a halfway house had no constitutional right not to have female staff members see his genitals when he peed in a cup for a drug test. Zullinger v. York County CCC Halfway House, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78404 (M.D. Pa. June 3, 2013).*

Defendant did not properly object to the search warrant in this case, so he waived the claim, also considering the presumption of validity of a search warrant. “Search warrants are presumed valid, and ‘where a presumption of the validity of a search warrant exists, the burden is upon the defendant to overturn that presumption.’ Jones v. State, 783 N.E.2d 1132, 1136 (Ind. 2003).’” Speer v. State, 2013 Ind. App. LEXIS 266 (May 31, 2013).*

Defendant’s stop was without reasonable suspicion, and everything that happened during the stop couldn’t be attenuated from that. Suppression granted. United States v. Lunas, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78769 (W.D. Pa. June 5, 2013).*

The affidavit for search warrant fairly showed probable cause, and defendant’s quibbling over one detail did not undermine the PC. “Although this description does not contain a physical description of the size, shape, or color of the items to be seized it does provide more than a generic description.” It was clear. United States v. Beck, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 79055 (E.D. N.C. June 5, 2013).*

A window tint stop did not prohibit the officers from running wants or warrants on him and ordering him out of the car. United States v. Castle, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 78412 (W.D. Tenn. May 17, 2013).*