{"id":4541,"date":"2010-11-17T11:55:38","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T18:36:09","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T18:36:09","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=4541","title":{"rendered":"CA9: Rehearing en banc denied in Pineda-Moreno<\/em>, with 5 dissenting"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ninth Circuit upheld GPS surveillance in United States v. Pineda-Moreno<\/a>, 591 F.3d 1212 (9th Cir. January 11, 2010). Yesterday, the denial of rehearing en banc was entered, with Judge Kozinski dissenting<\/a>, with four others:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there\u2019s one kind of diversity that doesn\u2019t exist: No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter. Judges, regardless of race, ethnicity or sex, are selected from the class of people who don\u2019t live in trailers or urban ghettos. The everyday problems of people who live in poverty are not close to our hearts and minds because that\u2019s not how we and our friends live. Yet poor people are entitled to privacy, even if they can\u2019t afford all the gadgets of the wealthy for ensuring it. Whatever else one may say about Pineda-Moreno, it\u2019s perfectly clear that he did not expect\u2014and certainly did not consent\u2014to have strangers prowl his property in the middle of the night and attach electronic tracking devices to the underside of his car. No one does. <\/p>\n

When you glide your BMW into your underground garage or behind an electric gate, you don\u2019t need to worry that somebody might attach a tracking device to it while you sleep. But the Constitution doesn\u2019t prefer the rich over the poor; the man who parks his car next to his trailer is entitled to the same privacy and peace of mind as the man whose urban fortress is guarded by the Bel Air Patrol. The panel\u2019s breezy opinion is troubling on a number of grounds, not least among them its unselfconscious cultural elitism.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that most people in the United States would agree with the panel that someone who leaves his car parked in his driveway outside the door of his home invites people to crawl under it and attach a device that will track the vehicle\u2019s every movement and transmit that information to total strangers. There is something creepy and un-American about such clandestine and underhanded behavior. To those of us who have lived under a totalitarian regime, there is an eerie feeling of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. This case, if any, deserves the comprehensive, mature and diverse consideration that an en banc panel can provide. We are taking a giant leap into the unknown, and the consequences for ourselves and our children may be dire and irreversible. Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we\u2019re living in Oceania.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}