The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
(U.S. Const. amend. IV)

Until the past few years with the rise of NSA spying and TSA pat downs, the Fourth Amendment has not been talked about as much as the Second or First. That does not make it any less important, as a matter of fact eliminating Fourth Amendment Rights, pretty much eliminates First & Second Amendment rights along with them.

Recently, Democrats in both New York and California have introduced bills that would outright ban the sale of mobile devices with encryption technology. The similar bills introduced in California by State Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) and in New York by Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-Staten Island), if passed, would require all smartphones that are sold to be “capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider.”

Via endgadget:

Cooper’s reasoning puts a novel spin on the same, tired “The police can’t do their jobs unless tech companies do it for them” argument. This time, he used human trafficking as the boogeyman that needs defeating and which can only be accomplished if the government has unfettered, disk-level access to its citizens’ cell phones.

“If you’re a bad guy [we] can get a search record for your bank, for your house, you can get a search warrant for just about anything,” Cooper told ArsTechnica. “For the industry to say it’s privacy, it really doesn’t hold any water. We’re going after human traffickers and people who are doing bad and evil things. Human trafficking trumps privacy, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.” Apparently human trafficking also trumps the 4th Amendment as well. Read more…

Forcing everyone into using un-encrypted mobile devices and opening up not just the government sector thieves but private sector thieves as well to be able to access your private information is much worse. People use their smart phones today for banking, medical information and a whole host of other legal activities that require privacy.

While I agree that human trafficking is a disgusting and vile criminal activity that has to be stopped, it is not more important than the fundamental right to privacy. If a warrant can be obtained for all those other things it can be obtained to search a smart phone as well.

This made me chuckle when I saw it.

Hat Tip: Wirecutter

This past March, Esmeralda Rossi, of Chandler, AZ, was in the shower when two police officer’s came knocking on her door.

“I was in the shower,” Rossi said. “My daughter came to the shower and said there are two officers at the door. So I just grabbed a towel.”

Rossi has not committed any crime, the police who arrived had not had any sort of warrant, yet the actions that occurred that night were the type of police tactics you would thing would be reserved for a violent criminal brandishing a weapon.

The police were there because they were responding to a call about an earlier argument between Rossi and her estranged husband.

Rossi, after answering the door, felt that the manor in which one of the officers approached, from the front door of her home, was very aggressive. She asked for them to wait for a moment so she could put on some clothes and get a cellphone to record their conversation.

“It made me very uncomfortable,” Rossi said. “So I closed the door. I turn to go into my living room, and I probably get about five steps in; and all of a sudden, I just hear boots running in after me, telling me stop or I’ll arrest you.”

Doug Rose, Chandler, AZ, Police officer who falsely arrested woman. Now retired and free to receive tax-payer funded pension.

It was at this point in which Rossi’s daughter began filming the encounter.

Without any provocation, or probably cause, the two officers stormed into the her home and proceeded to assault a woman, who was wearing nothing but a towel, doing so in front of her daughter.

As the sex-offender in a badge begins to assault the victim, under the threats of an illegal arrest, her towel drops completely exposing her now naked body. That didn’t stop the bastard from attempting to assault I mean “arrest” Rossi.

Rossi was handcuffed and subdued by her attacker, but was never charged with any crime.

Because she committed no crime.

Via KNXV-TV:

After reviewing the incident, Chandler Police internal investigators determined Rose entered the home illegally and without probable cause. The investigation also determined that Rose didn’t document arresting or un-arresting the woman or the fact that she was naked.

There was also no video from his body camera for the call, records show.

After the incident, the other officer involved immediately contacted his supervisor to raise questions about Rose’s actions. The second officer was cleared of wrongdoing.

Chandler Police declined to comment, citing the potential lawsuit. Rose also didn’t respond to requests for comment. Read More…

It’s assholes like this piece of trash, that give the vast majority of good police officers a bad name. He should be charged with breaking and entering, false arrest, kidnapping and sexual assault.

However, the kicker is that the bastard retired from the force and is eligible to receive a full tax-payer funded pension.

Land of the free and home of the brave…

In an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with law enforcement in a case arising from a police officer’s misunderstanding of the law. In their decision in the case of Heien v. North Carolina, the Supreme court held that a person’s 4th amendment right against an unreasonable search are not necessarily violated even if the arresting office is unaware of the law.

In an 8-1 decision, writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that “Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable,” no 4th amendment rights were violated.

In 2009 Nicholas Heien was driving with a broken taillight in North Carolina when he was pulled over by police for a single broken brake light. At the time of the incident and arrest the police had mistakenly believed that state law required vehicles to have two working taillights — which was not in fact the case.

Upon receiving consent to search the vehicle, police found cocaine and charged Heien with drug trafficking. At trial, Heien’s lawyer tried to suppress the evidence arising out of the search by arguing that the officer never had the reasonable suspicion needed to the defendant over, because having one broken taillight was not illegal.

The trial court ruled against him, but later on the appellate court found that Heien’s 4th Amendment rights were violated and reversed the decision. Later, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the decision again, holding that an officer’s understanding of the state’s taillight requirements could form the basis for reasonable suspicion because that understanding, while incorrect, was reasonable

Which led to the case being heard in the US Supreme Court. Writing for the majority, Cheif Justice Roberts claimed, “Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable, the stop in this case was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.”

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayer criticized her colleagues for granting so much leeway to police. She wrote:

To my mind, the more administrable approach—and the one more consistent with our precedents and principles— would be to hold that an officer’s mistake of law, no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

I can’t believe I am agreeing with Sonia Sotomayor, but she is exactly right. This rulingf by her colleagues on the Supreme Court, opens up citizens to the possibility of searches based on all kinds of lawful conduct, as long as the police office making the search has a “reasonable” misunderstanding of the law.

Basically to avoid being searched by the police, citizens will not only have to avoid appearing to be participating in an illegal activity, but avoid appearing to be involved in a legal activity that a police office may possible misconstrue as criminal.

So now, “ignorance of the law” is still no excuse for citizens facing a conviction, but it is now perfectly acceptable for law enforcement to be ignorant of the same laws they are supposed to be enforcing.

Judge Richard Posner, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, believes that the NSA should have unlimited access to digital data.

Privacy? It’s not really that important, according to one Federal Judge, Richard Posner, who currently sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Last week, during a conference in Washington, D.C., about cybercrime, Posner stated that he believed that privacy is “overvalued.” “Much of what passes for the name of privacy is really just trying to conceal the disreputable parts of your conduct,” he said.

Via PC World:

Congress should limit the NSA’s use of the data it collects—for example, not giving information about minor crimes to law enforcement agencies—but it shouldn’t limit what information the NSA sweeps up and searches, Posner said. “If the NSA wants to vacuum all the trillions of bits of information that are crawling through the electronic worldwide networks, I think that’s fine,” he said.

In the name of national security, U.S. lawmakers should give the NSA “carte blanche,” Posner added. “Privacy interests should really have very little weight when you’re talking about national security,” he said. “The world is in an extremely turbulent state—very dangerous.”

Posner criticized mobile OS companies for enabling end-to-end encryption in their newest software. “I’m shocked at the thought that a company would be permitted to manufacture an electronic product that the government would not be able to search,” he said

…

Posner questioned why smartphone users need legal protections, saying he doesn’t understand what information on smartphones should be shielded from government searches. “If someone drained my cell phone, they would find a picture of my cat, some phone numbers, some email addresses, some email text,” he said. “What’s the big deal? Read More…

So, basically according to Posner, as long as its in the interest of ‘National Security’ the State has the power to do pretty much whatever it damn well pleases to you. If you don’t think those thoughts coming from a sitting Federal Judge are not downright terrifying, there is something seriously wrong with you.

This is what America has come to, the use of quotation marks is perfect.

Officer Sean Harrington has been charged with stealing and distributing private images from the phones of women he had arrested.

A now former California Highway Patrol Officer was charged with two felonies last Friday. His crime? Stealing and then distributing nude images that he lifted off the phones of female suspects.

He got caught when shortly after being pulled over for a DUI last August, the first victim noticed from her iPad, thanks to Apple’s iCloud service, that someone had sent nude images of her from her phone to another phone. After investigating the phone that received the nude pics was that of Officer Sean Harrington of the California Highway Patrol in Dublin, Calif., who in turn passed the photos around to his fellow Officers of the law.

Via The San Jose Mercury News:

MARTINEZ — A Dublin-based CHP officer has resigned from the agency and was charged Friday with two felonies for allegedly secretly forwarding himself explicit photos from female arrestees’ phones and then sharing the images with colleagues.

Officer Sean Harrington, 35, of Martinez, faces up to three years and eight months in prison under the two counts of computer theft filed against him Friday afternoon in Contra Costa County Superior Court. Harrington submitted his resignation to the CHP on Wednesday, according to a statement released by his attorney Friday afternoon.

Contra Costa deputy district attorney Barry Grove said his office is declining to file charges at this time against CHP Officers Robert Hazelwood and Dion Simmons who, according to court documents, each received stolen photos from Harrington.

Grove called the conversation between the officers about the women and their stolen photos in text messages “unethical, unappealling, and maybe immoral,” but not in violation of the penal code.

In a statement from his attorney, Michael Rains, Harrington offered “his deepest apologies to the women whose cellular telephones were accessed or reviewed,” and apologized to law enforcement colleagues, saying he was ” embarrassed to have tarnished the reputation of the California Highway Patrol and law enforcement generally.”

An attorney for two of the women arrested welcomed the charges. Read More…

To “protect and serve.”

A Homework assignment given to students at Mapleton Junior High School in Utah has brought the school under fire, and rightfully so, after a parent posted it on Facebook complaining. Onika Harris, a concerned mother of a student, also sent a note to the school’s principal and the teacher that issued the questionable assignment.

Students were sent home with a worksheet that instructed them to go to their family medicine cabinet and write down a list of all of its contents, both over-the-counter and prescriptions. The assignment also instructed the students to describe what the medicine is used for, what the directions are for use, whether or not the user follows the directions, whether or not the medicine is still used, and whether or not the medicine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Via KSL-TV:

MAPLETON, Utah County — What’s in your medicine cabinet? It’s a pretty personal question, but that was the assignment students in one health class at Mapleton Junior High School brought home.

Concerns were raised when a copy of the assignment started circulating on social media websites. Nebo School District officials said not only was the assignment a violation of privacy, but also state HIPPA laws.

“This was an innocent mistake,” said Lana Hiskey with Nebo School District. “It was part of a health unit. (The teacher) wanted parents to know how to clean their medicine cabinets.”

At the top of the assignment, it explained how a major reason for drug abuse in Utah County is people aren’t safely disposing of medications.

The instructions then ask students to go home, look in their medicine cabinets and report back medication names, what the medication is being used for and if it’s still being used.

“(Teachers) create their own lesson plans every day, so something like this can slip through without someone else knowing it,” Hiskey said.

Hiskey describes the first-year teacher who assigned the project as someone who teaches with enthusiasm and wanted to send home meaningful homwork. Read More…

There is no doubt in my mind that this “enthusiastic teacher” is a hard-core liberal idiot.

Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed, booking photo from his 10-day jail sentence for his third drunken driving conviction 09/25/2013

In an effort to curb violent gun related crime in the City of Cleveland, Ward 2 City Councilman Zack Reed is proposing to ignore the basic 4th Amendment rights of all Americans and implement a “stop & frisk” policy in the Cleveland Police Department. Reed’s idea, which is not yet an official piece of legislation that has even been proposed to City council, comes on the heels of a very violent Monday night which saw four men injured in four separate gun-related incidents.

In an interview with WKYC’s Tom Beres, Reed said:

“We’ need to get in their face. Let them know if you are carrying a gun we are going to get it. You commit a crime you are going to jail. We are going to do all these aggressive things to put in their mind this is not the Wild Wild West.”

As a Clevelander, albeit one that has moved out and escaped to the suburbs and as a decent human being, I can sympathize with Councilman Reed’s desire to make the streets of my hometown safe for everyone. However, as is typical of the idiotic politicians that make up Northeast Ohio, Reed’s idea is not just an ass backwards way of trying to solve the gun violence problem, its also unconstitutional.

Thanks to the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The key words there are “unreasonable” and “probable cause.” The type of “stop & frisk” situations that would be used, much like the policy that was used in New York City until it was struck down by a Federal Judge would neither be “reasonable” or take legitimate “probable cause” into account. Time and time again studies have shown that the type of “probable cause” used by police officers is their suspect being young, black and in the inner city.

On October 31, 1963, in Cleveland none-the-less, Police Detective Martin J. McFadden saw three men loitering in front of a jewelery store near E. 13th and Euclid Ave. and peering into the windows. Believing that a robbery was about to take place, McFadden approached all three, identified himself as a police officer and then patted them down. During his search he found weapons on two of the three men and they were eventually charged with and convicted of carrying concealed weapons.

The law at the time only allowed police to stop a suspect after a crime was committed, the convicted men appealed their case and it eventually made its was to the United States Supreme Court. In a landmark decision on June 10, 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the court’s opinion that McFadden’s action, called a “Terry Stop” after one of the suspects, was justifiable.

Councilman Reed says that he wants to put in the minds of the criminals in Cleveland that “this is not the Wild Wild West.” The problem with the version of “stop & frisk” that Reed wants to implement, the same version that was struck down in New York is that it is “Wild Wild West” law enforcement. In New York much of the time not only was there no “reasonable” suspicion used in patting down American citizens, but no suspicion at all was used.

On NYPD’s stop & frisk program, via the American Prospect:

At the core of the constitutional challenge to the department’s practices is a comprehensive study by Professor Jeffrey Fagan at Columbia University. Fagan’s study provided overwhelming evidence that New York’s aggressive stop-and-frisk policy was arbitrary and discriminatory. The sheer numbers are staggering—more than 5 million searches have been conducted under the current policy. Nearly 90 percent of the searches did not turn up anything that could justify any kind of arrest or summons. Blacks and Latinos comprised 87 percent of those searches.

More in-depth analysis confirms what the general numbers suggest. Fagan’s study found that a minimum of 6 percent of searches were “apparently unjustified.” As Scheindlin observes, the 6 percent of unjustified stops is a floor rather than a ceiling. Scheindlin made extremely charitable assumptions—including taking the unchallenged reports of officers at face value. The percentage also doesn’t consider the occasions in which a stop-and-frisk goes unreported.

Even if we were to assume that “only” 6 percent of searches were completely unjustifiable, this still represents 200,000 people whose rights were violated. The number of people subject to unjustifiable searches is certainly far higher. For example, Fagan did not classify searches justified by the officer solely based on allegedly “furtive movements” by the suspect, although it is clear that this is reasoning that cannot meet the “reasonable suspicion” standard. Virtually anybody can be accused of “furtive movement,” and the standard is so useless that Fagan’s study showed that people who displayed “furtive movements” were actually less likely to be arrested than those that did not.

What’s even worse is that the arbitrary searches are not distributed randomly. Racial minorities are searched far out of proportion to their percentage of the populations. New York City has defended this by arguing that racial minorities are also disproportionately represented among those arrested for violent crimes. Scheindlin disposes of this defense by noting that since nine out of ten people stopped are innocent, this defense is irrelevant. Moreover, “[t]he NYPD carries out more stops where there are more black and Hispanic residents, even when other relevant variables are held constant.” The singling out of racial minorities cannot be justified.

Given the data, Scheindlin had little choice but to find that the stop-and-frisk policy violated the Fourth Amendment as well as the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. A large number of searches have been conducted without reasonable suspicion, and these suspicionless searches have disproportionately targeted racial minorities. Of 19 individual stops, the court found that 9 of the stop-and-frisks were unconstitutional, 5 of the frisks after stops were unconstitutional, and 5 were constitutionally permissible.

Instead of trying to find actual ways of influencing the culture and dealing with the root problems of crime and poverty in the inner-city Zack Reed’s idea would only take away the rights of every citizen in an effort to weed out the bad apples, turning the city into a NAZI-style police state. I’m sorry Zack Reed but the Fourth Amendment applies to everyone, white guys in the suburbs like myself and minorities in the inner-city as well.

The State’s never-ending battle to invade our privacy never ends. The latest attempt to violate the right to privacy comes from the California (where else?). Next week a City Council Committee in San Jose is going to discuss a proposal introduced last Thursday by Councilman Sam Liccardo, that would ask for homeowners to give access to their home security access to the Police for, you know, “the greater good.”

From The San Jose Mercury News:

Privacy groups say the latest proposal is part of a broader trend toward a world where authorities have more surveillance access to places that once were considered private.

“To me the really interesting and troublesome part of it is the way we are starting to privatize government surveillance — to enlist private citizens in a way that is kind of unprecedented and could be potentially really dangerous,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit. “Once you give the police unfettered access 24/7, you’re relying on them to exercise their restraint.”

Retired judge LaDoris Cordell, the city’s independent police auditor, said the proposal is the next logical extension of technological advances that have helped provide cops with more video of crimes. It’s common now for onlookers to take cellphone videos of officers, and the San Jose Police Department is working on a new program to equip officers with body-worn cameras.

“You tend to behave when the cameras are on you,” Cordell said. She doesn’t see the idea so much as an “intrusion on privacy” but as a way for residents to “know what’s going on in their neighborhood.” Read More…

I’m reminded of this great Benjamin Franklin quote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.“

Last week an eagle-eyed, hard working member of the Transportation Security Administration disarmed a violent criminal in St. Louis, MS. The criminal in question, “Rooster Monkburn,” not to be confused with the similarly named former US Marshall and his accomplice Phyllis May of Redmond, WA were both ultimately released and allowed to continue on their way to Seattle. However the heroic TSA agent managed to confiscate Mr. Monkburn’s weapon.

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The violent terrorist Mrs. May who has an obviously fake cover job of creating & selling sock monkey’s, claims that she, Monkburn as well as her yet-to-be-named husband were on a flight from St. Louis to Sea-Tac and she had a couple of monkeys and sewing supplies with her in a carry-on bag. In the packet os sewing supplies was the weapon in question, Mr. Monkburn’s pistol.

The following is Mrs. May’s account of what happened when she noticed the excellent work by the TSA Agent:

“And the (TSA agent) held it up and said ‘whose is this?’” she said. “I realized oh, my God this is my bag.”

May said the TSA agent went through the bag, through the sewing supplies and found the two-inch long pistol.

“She said ‘this is a gun,’” said May. “I said no, it’s not a gun it’s a prop for my monkey.”

“She said ‘If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn’t know if it was real or not,’ and I said ‘really?’” said May.

The TSA agent told May she would have to confiscate the tiny gun and was supposed to call the police.

“I said well go ahead,” said May. “And I said really? You’re kidding me right, and she said no it looks like a gun.”

Ultimately the heroic TSA Agent kept the lethal weapon without contacting the police. I’m just glad that our Nation’s skies are safe from this violent menace.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Authoritarian Communist-CA & Vice-Chair Sen. Saxby Chambliss, RiNO-GA

Just in time for Halloween, like a cheesy horror movie monster that refuses to die, CISPA is back. If you don’t pay attention CISPA or The Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act, is being sold as an attempt to protect us from cyber threats. What it really is though is trampling all over the Constitution, particularly the 4th Amendment.

It basically lets the government snoop on your every electronic move without a warrant. Makes it so you can’t find out about it, shields big business from being sued when they do shady things with your data, pretty much makes every current privacy policy on sites across the internet, that’s everything from Facebook, to commenting on this blog here — irrelevant. It is basically a complete violation of the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure.

From Salon:

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has twice died in Congress, following objections from privacy advocates. Like a resilient zombie, it has risen once again and a new version of the bill — which passed the House in the summer — is getting support from some Senators, bolstered by NSA officials.

The bill, ostensibly aimed at protecting U.S. commerce from cyberattacks, enables companies and government agencies giving to share more cyber information, including the content and personal information attached to emails.

As Mother Jones reported Monday, “NSA director Keith Alexander is publicly asking for the legislation to be re-introduced, and two senators confirmed that they are drafting a new Senate version.”

Senate Intelligence Committee chair and NSA mass surveillance apologist Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is pairing with Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., to put forward a senate version of CISPA, much to the continued concern of privacy advocates.

Remy hits one out of the park again.