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California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

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Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#11

Post by paws »

tothrowaway wrote: post #3

> Ultimately, the court’s CalECPA analysis proved fatal to the defendants’ case. Despite ruling the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment, the court refused to suppress the evidence, finding the officers acted in good faith based on a facially valid warrant. Incredible. This is like the government version of a corporation laundering its bad behavior through an undercapitalized shell company to shield it from liabilit…

I'm not knowledgeable about CalECPA, but I sure don't see why officers who 'acted in good faith' should be a basis for violating the peoples' 4th amendment rights.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#12

Post by zamnos »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #7
kadoban wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Fourth Amendment, for example, protects more narrowly against search in the context of criminal prosecution: no prosecution, no rights violation. How can that be true, since the 4th amendment doesn't include any word or phrase referring to a prosecution?

The Constitution puts limits on what the government can do, but if the government does those things anyway, there's no automatic penalty. You as an individual could ask a court to order the government to stop or otherwise undo the harm, but if you weren't harmed as a result of that unconstitutional act, or if you were harmed but there's nothing the court could do about it, then you don't have standing to ask the cour…

Of course, if they failed to disconnect all your security cameras, the story won't end there. You make a rap about the raid, put the cops stealing money from you in your music video, and the cops will turn around and sue you for invasion of privacy and emotional distress. You might need to be Afroman for that to work though. Also this was Ohio not California.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/23/ohio-police-...

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#13

Post by MereInterest »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #7
kadoban wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Fourth Amendment, for example, protects more narrowly against search in the context of criminal prosecution: no prosecution, no rights violation. How can that be true, since the 4th amendment doesn't include any word or phrase referring to a prosecution?

The Constitution puts limits on what the government can do, but if the government does those things anyway, there's no automatic penalty. You as an individual could ask a court to order the government to stop or otherwise undo the harm, but if you weren't harmed as a result of that unconstitutional act, or if you were harmed but there's nothing the court could do about it, then you don't have standing to ask the cour…

It sounds like the root cause is that the judicial system doesn't consider a search to be a harm in itself, only in the effects that it could have.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#15

Post by mikece »

perihelions wrote: post #4

Found something interesting not mentioned in the article: apparently, police ransacked six innocent peoples' Google data, in the process of getting to the two guilty ones. - "Google produced a list of eight anonymized accounts that had been at two or more of the six locations at the relevant time periods. Of the eight accounts, one had been at four of the geofence locations, one at three locations and the remaining s…

From past episodes of the Privacy, Security, and OSINT Podcast (hosted by a former FBI special agent) EVERYONE returned by a geofence warrant will be listed in the investigation whether exonerated or not, which then, because of public records laws, means the data becomes public and innocent names are mixed with criminal records (and HR background check companies don't always filter out names in criminal reports who aren't charged with anything).

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#16

Post by [deleted] »

anigbrowl wrote: post #10
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Constitution puts limits on what the government can do, but if the government does those things anyway, there's no automatic penalty. You as an individual could ask a court to order the government to stop or otherwise undo the harm, but if you weren't harmed as a result of that unconstitutional act, or if you were harmed but there's nothing the court could do about it, then you don't have standing to ask the cour…

Of course, you could argue that qualified immunity has no constitutional or solid legal basis either, and is basically a creation of the judicial branch to simplify exception handling.

[deleted]

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#17

Post by [deleted] »

anigbrowl wrote: post #10
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Constitution puts limits on what the government can do, but if the government does those things anyway, there's no automatic penalty. You as an individual could ask a court to order the government to stop or otherwise undo the harm, but if you weren't harmed as a result of that unconstitutional act, or if you were harmed but there's nothing the court could do about it, then you don't have standing to ask the cour…

Of course, you could argue that qualified immunity has no constitutional or solid legal basis either, and is basically a creation of the judicial branch to simplify exception handling.

[deleted]

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#18

Post by torstenvl »

anigbrowl wrote: post #10
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Constitution puts limits on what the government can do, but if the government does those things anyway, there's no automatic penalty. You as an individual could ask a court to order the government to stop or otherwise undo the harm, but if you weren't harmed as a result of that unconstitutional act, or if you were harmed but there's nothing the court could do about it, then you don't have standing to ask the cour…

Of course, you could argue that qualified immunity has no constitutional or solid legal basis either, and is basically a creation of the judicial branch to simplify exception handling.

Qualified immunity is self-evident. The idea that the government can violate the government's laws by performing lawful government duties is an inherent absurdity. It would also completely undermine democracy.

It's also tangential and off topic to this conversation.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#19

Post by jonas21 »

perihelions wrote: post #4

Found something interesting not mentioned in the article: apparently, police ransacked six innocent peoples' Google data, in the process of getting to the two guilty ones. - "Google produced a list of eight anonymized accounts that had been at two or more of the six locations at the relevant time periods. Of the eight accounts, one had been at four of the geofence locations, one at three locations and the remaining s…

> police ransacked six innocent peoples' Google data

That's a bit extreme. The police were given their identification information, not the contents of their accounts.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#20

Post by mistrial9 »

actually I posted here on YNews last year about San Diego-based company that was creating "fence" zones for emergency response with a geo-web site to coordinate them. Second an anecdote where a California Highway Patrol fire response officer was shown abruptly and dismissively telling the mayor of a small town that the restrictions on access "could last a year."

That YNews post was met with multiple "so what" and "they make money" kinds of responses, without any apparent alarm at the technology creep.

Perhaps you have heard of a "ratchet" effect, where one law plus one technology plus later, one more law, creates a non-reversible and serious change to the social contract for law enforcement?

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