Defendant’s disclaiming ownership of an airplane that DHS was questioning the pilot named Pinto about that Pinto claimed was his airplane was a waiver of a reasonable expectation of privacy in the airplane. The same rules of standing that apply to cars apply to airplanes. United States v. Ambriz-Valenzuela, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68706 (D. Kan. June 28, 2011).*

The court credits the Marshals’ testimony about defendant’s consent. Defendant has no criminal history, but she is a sophisticated person with a doctoral degree in nursing and knew what she was doing. United States v. Snellgrove, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68837 (S.D. Tex. June 27, 2011).*

There was probable cause for the search warrant in this case based on CI information that was independently corroborated by the police. United States v. Underwood, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68632 (W.D. Mo. June 7, 2011).*

Defendant was tried on the merits of a failure to identify himself case with the suppression motion included in the trial. The trial judge suppressed because the officer did not give a good basis for the stop, and then granted a directed verdict because there was no evidence. This acquittal was not collateral estoppel to a trial on subsequent charges for possession of methamphetamine because, inter alia, the first acquittal was not appealable by the state. This is an interesting and complex opinion on double jeopardy, Ashe v. Swanson, and collateral estoppel. York v. State, 342 S.W.3d 528 (Tex. Crim. App. 2011):

In light of our discussion, we reaffirm the bottom-line result in Murphy as controlling where a defendant seeks to bar the relitigation of suppression issues on the basis of double jeopardy. That is, the State is not barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause from relitigating a suppression issue that was not an ultimate fact in the first prosecution and was not an ultimate fact in the second prosecution. We overrule appellant's second ground for review.

How hard is it to get a warrant to place a GPS device on a vehicle and then later to search a cell phone? Not too. United States v. Macias-Perez, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68305 (N.D. Iowa June 24, 2011).*

Officers conducted a controlled delivery of a FedEx package with drugs. At the house, the person signing for the package said that he was not the recipient, but he’d sign for it. To the officers, then, that meant that the intended recipient was still there. They conducted a protective sweep for the other person, finding no one. They asked for consent, and it was refused. They secured the premises for a search warrant. The protective sweep that revealed a gun that was not seized until after the warrant arrived was valid. United States v. Wolfe, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68235 (E.D. Tenn. June 2, 2011).*

The audio of defendant’s traffic stop was hard to hear, and it did not show that defendant consented or not consented. Thus, the court credits the officer’s testimony that the defendant consented. United States v. Griffin, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 143280 (N.D. Ga. September 7, 2010).*

Officers talked with defendant about child pornography, and he denied accessing child porn sites, and he consented to them taking a computer. Analysis of the computer showed that it had stopped being used before purchases were made from child porn websites. Although the officers could not show that child pornography was actually downloaded on those purchases, something was and it probably was child porn. Therefore, the search warrant for other computers in the house was issued with probable cause. United States v. Rosenbeck, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68070 (D. Mass. June 24, 2011).*

Defendant’s wife had apparent authority to consent to a search of a computer at home that she looked at and found nude pictures surreptitiously made of her daughter. United States v. Rowe, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 67852 (D. Mont. June 24, 2011).*

Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in somebody else’s cell phone to complain of a wiretap. United States v. Degaule, 797 F. Supp. 2d 1332 (N.D. Ga. 2011),* R&R 797 F. Supp. 2d 1332 (N.D. Ga. 2011), Approved by, Adopted by, Motion denied by, 797 F. Supp. 2d 1332, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 67983 (N.D. Ga., June 24, 2011).*

A USMJ has the legal authority to dismiss a criminal complaint for lack of probable cause after having signed off on it in the first place. Here, however, there was probable cause as defendant was arrested in a grow house in the Bronx. United States v. Coiscou, 793 F. Supp. 2d 680 (S.D. N.Y. 2011):

I find the Tejada court’s reasoning more persuasive and conclude that a magistrate judge has the authority to dismiss a complaint for lack of probable cause at or after an initial appearance. I see little difference between dismissing a complaint for lack of probable cause at a preliminary hearing—as a magistrate judge must under Rule 5.1(f)—and dismissing the complaint at some point during or after an initial appearance but before a probable cause determination at such a hearing has been made. Someone being denied his liberty on an insufficient complaint should not have to wait to be released, even for the relatively short period of time until a preliminary hearing takes place. As Coiscou correctly notes, “[a] complaint that does not establish probable cause is ‘invalid.’” Def.’s Letter at 2 (quoting Hollingsworth v. United States, 321 F.2d 342, 348 (10th Cir. 1963)).

Further, the fact that a magistrate judge—here, the undersigned—may have taken the agent’s oath and signed the complaint as required by Rule 3 and thus made an initial determination that probable cause exists as required by Rule 4 does not mean that the same or another magistrate judge may not later reach a different conclusion as to probable cause as legal arguments are presented in the adversarial process. Indeed, that is exactly what is contemplated by Rule 5.1(f). This is particularly so because, when the complaint is filed, “[t]he criminal process is still in the investigative stage, and ‘the adverse positions of government and defendant’ have yet to solidify.” United States v. Alvarado, 440 F.3d 191, 200 (4th Cir. 2006) (quoting United States v. Gouveia, 467 U.S. 180, 189, 104 S. Ct. 2292, 81 L. Ed. 2d 146 (1984)). Thus, the filing of a complaint “can no more be characterized as ‘the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings against the defendant,’ than can the filing of an affidavit in support of a search warrant.” Id. (quoting Gouveia, 467 U.S. at 187); see also United States v. Stein, 541 F.3d 130, 152 (2d Cir. 2008) (“The Supreme Court has ‘pegged commencement of a prosecution to the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings—whether by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.’” (alterations omitted) (quoting Rothgery v. Gillespie County, 554 U.S. 191, 198, 128 S. Ct. 2578, 171 L. Ed. 2d 366 (2008)).

Domestic Spy Agency? 5 Outrageous Examples of FBI Intimidation and Entrapment // In the 10 years since the Sept. 11th attacks, the FBI has expanded its powers, transforming into a massive domestic spying agency by Kevin Gosztola:

In 2010, the FISA court approved all 1,506 requests by the FBI to electronically monitor suspects. They were also generous with granting “national security letters," which allow the FBI to force credit card companies, financial institutions, and internet service providers to give confidential records about customers’ subscriber information, phone number, email addresses and the websites they’ve visited. The FBI got permission to spy on 14,000 people in this way.

Do they really think there are 14,000 terrorists living in the US?

That's just the beginning.

Now, the FBI is claiming the authority to exercise more surveillance powers, which include undocumented database searches, lie detector tests, trash searches, surveillance squads, investigations of public officials, scholars and journalists and rules that would provide more freedom for agents and informants to not disclose participation in organizations that are targets of FBI surveillance.

Apparently the difference between the KGB and the FBI is that the FBI has to go through a judicial rubberstamp and the KGB didn't have to bother with the extra paperwork of the national security letters.