Refining The Law Because Of Technology

For those of us who grew up before the age of computers and cell phones, a lot of what is currently happening in technology and being created electronically is very foreign. These changes in technology are also impacting our laws. Being tracked by your cell phone is nothing new. Back in the day when your cell phone looked like something you would use to call in an air strike, when you left one calling zone and entered another, you got a welcoming phone call. Even back then they knew where you were if you carried a cell phone (then known as a car phone).

On Wednesday, Just the News posted an article about how the location information on cell phones can be used.

The article reports:

Two federal appeals courts have taken starkly different views on one of the government ‘s newer electronic dragnet tools – geofence warrants that track people via their cell phones – setting up a likely showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court that could define privacy in the digital era for decades to come.

Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that such geofence warrants are “categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment” protection against unlawful search and seizure. The judges concluded the mass gathering of Americans’ cell phone geographic locations to identify a single suspect in a postal worker’s armed robbery amounted to the sort of general warrant that the Founding Fathers steadfastly rejected at America’s birth as their new country broke from British rule.

“It is undeniable that general warrants are plainly unconstitutional,” that appeals court ruled. The 5th Circuit oversees appeals from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas federal district courts.

A few states over, the 4th U.S. Circuit of Appeals came to a different conclusion, ruling that when law enforcement gathers two hours of all a cell phone users’ records in Google’s database for a certain location near a crime it didn’t violate privacy because more than a half-billion cell phone users had opted to turn on the geo-tracking capabilities of their to make their apps work better. Such opt-ins, the 4th Circuit ruled, amounted to a waiver of privacy. The 4th Circuit oversees appeals from Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina federal district courts.

The article concludes:

In other words, using a digital dragnet to search millions of Americans location records to identify an unknown assailant or two amounted to a fishing exercise tantamount to the “general warrants” the Constitution’s framers rejected handily two centuries earlier.

Google has revealed that the number of geo-warrants has gone from rare in 2016 to overwhelming – more than 10,000 annually – a decade later. The tech giant announced last year it was shutting down its ability to store all users’ geo location data in its own database known as Sensorvault and instead leaving it on each consumer’s cell phone where it must be obtained by individual warrant.

No matter how Google changes their practices, the breadth of digital searching that law enforcement can still do in 2024 from other vendors leaves most experts certain the issue of geofencing and tactics likely will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This is something to watch. How much privacy are Americans entitled to?

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Listening To The People

I recently posted three articles (here, here, and here) about the renewal of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Section 702. Note that the law is called “foreign intelligence surveillance” act–not the spying on your political opponents act. Unfortunately the act has been used 278,000 times to conduct illegal searches on Americans. That is why I oppose the renewal of Section 702.

On Wednesday, The Hill reported:

A group of House Republicans on Wednesday tanked a procedural vote to begin debate on a bill to reauthorize the nation’s warrantless surveillance powers, leaving the chamber scrambling on how to address the important spy tool before it expires next week.

Nineteen Republicans joined Democrats in voting against a rule for legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), blocking the measure from advancing 193-228.

The move comes after former President Trump on Wednesday urged Republicans to “KILL FISA” — throwing a wrench in an already contentious debate.

The failed vote marks yet another instance of members of the GOP tanking what is typically a routine party-line vote to protest legislation put forward by leadership.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, The Hill is part of the Operation Mockingbird media. The public has also urged Congress to kill FISA, but the author of the article chooses to overlook that.

On Wednesday, The Hill also reported:

Former Attorney General Bill Barr on Wednesday denounced former President Trump’s exhortation for Congress to kill the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) as “crazy and reckless” and warned there will be “blood on people’s hands” if the intelligence community’s surveillance authority expires and there’s a terrorist attack on the United States.

Barr, who served in Trump’s Cabinet in 2019 and 2020, noted that Trump at one time supported the expanded surveillance powers authorized under Section 702 of FISA and warned that political “posturing” against extending that authority would be dangerous to national security.

“I think it’s crazy and reckless to not move forward with FISA. It’s our principal tool protecting us from terrorist attacks. We’re living through a time where those threats have never been higher, so it’s blinding us, it’s blinding our allies,” Barr told The Hill in an interview.

You mean those allies that aided in the Russia Hoax?

Section 702 is a step toward a government that can surveil its political opponents without any limitations. They don’t need a warrant and the people surveilled don’t have to know they are being watched. That is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which states:

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.

Bill Barr is a lawyer. He is supposed to know the U.S. Constitution.

Regaining Our Rights Guaranteed By The Fourth Amendment

The U.S. Constitution was not written to give Americans their rights. It was written to insure that the government respected the God-given rights of Americans. The Constitution was written to limit the rights of the government–not the rights of Americans. That concept seems to have gotten lost in recent years.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

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 government in recent years has violated that amendment by spying on Americans without cause or has invented causes (see Carter Page). Now that it has come to light that some Congressional staffers were spied on, Congress has decided to do something about it.

On Friday, Just the News reported:

House Judiciary Committee Republicans are pressing ahead with sweeping reforms to the government’s FISA surveillance powers that among other things would would prohibit the FBI from searching through Americans’ phone records without a court-approved warrant. 

The effort is on track to be wrapped up by the end of the year when several Patriot Act powers expire. Republicans and Democrats are coming together on this matter in rare bipartisan cooperation, lawmakers told Just the News.

“We’ve got, I think, strong agreement amongst members of the Intel Committee and members of the Judiciary Committee. And frankly some Democrats as well, that there needs to be stronger penalties if you abuse the system,” Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show in an interview aired Friday night.

Jordan said he was focused on what is known as the Section 702 system “where they can create this database” of phone communications metadata that currently can be searched by agents without a warrant. 

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court earlier this year declassified a report revealing that FBI agents had inappropriately searched Americans’ phone records more than 270,000 times over a two year period, alarming civil liberty experts and generating bipartisan condemnation.   

I hate to be cynical, but it seems that Congress is only getting around to dealing with this problem when it affected them. That’s okay. I just hope they successfully end unwarranted government spying on American citizens.

Is Anyone Protecting The Rights Of Americans?

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about unlawful surveillance of Tucker Carlson, a Fox News show host. The title of the article is, “Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Reveals NSA Conducting Surveillance on His Electronic Communication, Texts and Emails.”

The article reports:

As disturbing as this statement is, considering the prior admissions of warrantless wiretapping by the FBI using the NSA database, this does not come as a surprise.

Remember, for five consecutive years the U.S. intelligence community has admitted to the FISA court they continually conduct illegal searches of U.S. citizen data, using the NSA database, and they admit to illegally extracting information which is illegally shared with interests outside the intelligence community.

Tonight on Tucker Carlson the Fox News Host outlined how an NSA whistleblower contacted him and told him the NSA was conducting electronic surveillance of his communication.  To verify the authenticity of the claim the whistleblower told Carlson what the content of his private text messages and emails contained.  While alarming in part, again this should not be surprising. 

The article includes the following video:

The Fourth Amendment states:

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.

Who is protecting the rights of Americans?

 

 

Protecting The Fourth Amendment

Sharyl Attkisson posted an article on her website today about a recent Supreme Court decision. Hopefully the decision will give pause to those politicians who want to take guns from law-abiding Americans.

The article reports:

The U.S. Supreme Court recently unanimously agreed that a warrantless search and seizure of a man’s firearms from within his home was unconstitutional.

The case involved a domestic argument between a husband and wife. The husband placed a handgun on the dining room table and asked his wife to “shoot [him] now and get it over with”. The wife left the home and returned the next morning with police.

The man reportedly agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation on the condition that the officers not confiscate his firearms. But the police allegedly told the man’s wife that he’d agreed to give up the firearms. So the wife allowed them to enter the home and take them.

The lower courts upheld the police conduct under a “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment search and seizure protection.

I posted an article about the incident in March. The thing about the story that bothered me most was that the police lied to both the husband and the wife in order to take the guns from the house. I don’t think police should lie to law-abiding citizens.

Also, when was the last time the Supreme Court agreed 9-0 on anything?

The article concludes:

The community caretaking exception is commonly considered to apply to vehicles when a law enforcement officer is giving aid to a motorist.

A recognition of the existence of “community caretaking” tasks, like rendering aid to motorists in disabled vehicles, is not an open-ended license to perform [warrantless searches and seizures] anywhere.

U.S. Supreme Court

If the exception had been upheld, it would have been a significant limitation of Fourth Amendment rights.

I am truly glad to see that ruling. It protects all of us.