Head to Head: The NSA violates the Fourth Amendment - lsureveille.com : Columnists. Edward Snowden’s leak of the NSA’s PRISM program, shed light on one of the government’s largest violations of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.
Those who perpetuated, including President Barack Obama and NSA officials, need to be held accountable. Annoyed NY Mayor Attacks Court Decision On Stop And Frisk With Condescension And Hyperbole. New York's Mayor Bloomberg and Police Chief Ray Kelly held a press conference to register their dismay at the court decision declaring the city's controversial "stop and frisk" program to be unconstitutional.
Want NSA Attention? Use Encrypted Communications - Security - Bad news has emerged for fans of PGP and other encryption services.
New Orleans Cops Caught Filling Their Pockets With Red Light Camera Cash. Red light cameras have proven popular in certain communities (mainly the "law enforcement community").
They're a rather painless way to generate cash, both for the city itself and for the private contractors chosen to install and maintain the system. This influx of cash tends to pervert incentives, leading to questionable tactics being deployed, like shortening yellow lights to increase the "take," while doing little to nothing to increase public safety. While law enforcement usually benefits indirectly from this new revenue stream, the officers themselves rarely benefit directly from red light tickets.
FBI Admits To Using Drones To Spy On Americans. Most people in the US still associate government use of drones with far away places.
But they might want to start paying more attention to what's happening over their own heads. The FBI has now admitted that it uses drones for surveillance purposes domestically. Bill requires welfare recipients to sign waiver of their Fourth Amendment rights. By Eric W.
DolanMonday, March 4, 2013 17:56 EDT Low-income parents seeking federal assistance would be forced to sign away their Fourth Amendment rights under a bill proposed last week by Republican Rep. Anti-gun bill also violates 4th amendment w/home inspections by your sherrif. Ed Murray's new legislation would make most gun owners criminals.
DNA evidence vs. 4th Amendment. This week it was announced that DNA testing of bones found buried beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England, had established that they belonged to King Richard III, who was killed in battle in 1485.
Researchers were able to match DNA recovered from the skeleton with that of a living descendant of the much-vilified monarch's sister. The find was just the latest reminder of the immense power of DNA evidence, power that is expanding history and criminal justice but that also is subject to misuse. Supreme Court considers whether to take up anti-terrorism laws. WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, after a four-year break from terrorism issues, is set to decide as soon as Monday whether to again take up constitutional challenges to George W.
Bush-era anti-terrorism laws involving wiretapping and the Guantanamo prisoners. In one case, the Obama administration is asking the court to block a suit against the government's monitoring of international phone calls and emails. Is there such a thing as privacy in America? Pulitzer Prize winner David Shipler has been a New York Times correspondent in Israel and Moscow.
In his two most recent books, released earlier this year, he turns his attention to the erosion of civil liberties in the United States. In Rights at Risk and The Rights of the People, Shipler argues that both the War on Terror and the War on Crime have allowed the government to seep into Americans' personal lives in unconstitutional ways.
Shipler discussed his new books with KALW's Criminal Justice Editor, Rina Palta. RINA PALTA: A lot of people, I guess, associate the decline in civil rights for the purposes of security as associated with the post-9-11 era, and I think you say that it started even before then. Nevada police routinely track cellphone users without warrants - Wednesday, April 4. Charles Krupa / AP Photo A driver talks on a cell phone while driving through the Financial District of Boston. By David McGrath Schwartz Wednesday, April 4, 2012 | 2 a.m. Nevada law enforcement agencies have tracked the movements of citizens through their cellphones, sometimes without obtaining proper court approval, according to court records and documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.
A judge last year ruled North Las Vegas police had improperly obtained the location of a murder suspect from his cellphone carrier but allowed evidence gathered from the illegal tracking to be used in court, citing in part the absence of a state law regulating such tracking. Strip-Searching America: Florence v. County of Burlington. By John W. Whitehead Rev. John Whitehead. Supreme Court Undercuts 4th Amendment Protections-Again. After Car-Tracking Smackdown, Feds Turn to Warrantless Phone Tracking. Prosectors are shifting their focus to warrantless cell-tower locational tracking of suspects in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that law enforcement should acquire probable-cause warrants from judges to affix GPS devices to vehicles and monitor their every move, according to court records.
The change of strategy comes in the case the justices decided in January, when it reversed the life sentence of a District of Columbia area drug dealer, Antoine Jones, who was the subject of 28 days of warrantless GPS surveillance via a device the FBI secretly attached to his vehicle. In the wake of Jones’ decision, the FBI has pulled the plug on 3,000 GPS-tracking devices. “In this case, the government seeks to do with cell site data what it cannot do with the suppressed GPS data,” attorney Eduardo Balarezo wrote (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle. Balarezo added: The government has produced material obtained through court orders for the relevant cellular telephone numbers. Police Tracking of Cellphones Raises Privacy Fears.
1.3 million phone surveillance requests from US law agencies? Bloomberg decries NYCLU's criticism of 'stop and frisk' Appeals Court Halts Random Drug Testing of Forest Service Job Corps Employees. Random drug testing of government employees, this time by the U.S. Forest Service, was struck down again recently by a federal appeals court, which called the agency’s policy of drug testing all employees of the Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers a “solution in search of a problem.”
Files Brief Opposing Warrantless GPS Searches. ACLU: “reasonable suspicion” not good enough for GPS tracking. If you’re a student of the privacy and tech law worlds (or you just read Ars) then you’re probably familiar with last year’s Supreme Court decision, United States v. Progressive hip hop artist Jasiri X takes on stop-and-frisk laws with new video. Chief Justice allows DNA samples from Maryland suspects.
Maryland law enforcement agencies resume DNA collections. Suspects arrested for violent crimes or burglaries will again have to submit to DNA collections, officials with several Maryland law enforcement agencies said Thursday. Virginia Drug Possession Case Highlights Flawed Drug War Policies. U.S. Admits Surveillance Violated Constitution At Least Once. A plaque commemorates National Security Agency operatives at the agency’s Fort Meade, Maryland headquarters. Fourth Amendment caution for drones. Rep. Poe proposes new privacy bill: ‘The drones are coming’
By Eric W. DolanTuesday, July 24, 2012 21:31 EDT Republican Rep. Surveillance Fourth Amendment Violations Admitted by Feds. An NYPD Officer Analyzes the Controversial ‘Stop and Frisk’ Debate. The summer of 2012 has not been kind to U.S. law enforcement officials. As Occupy Wall Street protests subsided, the momentum shifted away from America’s financial sector and toward the long simmering issue of police-community relations.
Feds Admit NSA Spying Violated 4th Amendment. Released letter late Friday to avoid media scrutiny Steve Watson Prisonplanet.com July 23, 2012 In a rare admission that has gone almost completely unreported, the Director of National Intelligence has admitted that the National Security Agency violated the US constitution and abused its power by spying on American citizens and monitoring their communications. Supervisors set aside proposal to regulate speech, assembly at county facilities. Intelligence Community Agrees to Let Senator Mention That It Broke the Law. Four More Years of Warrantless Surveillance by Philip Giraldi.
TSA: Filming Checkpoints is ‘Terrorism’ Feds Admit NSA Spying Violated 4th Amendment « InvestmentWatch.