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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

#21

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

torstenvl wrote: post #18
anigbrowl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's not what qualified immunity is. qualified immunity means government officials can violate your rights by doing obviously illegal things as long as no government official has previously been convicted for doing the exact same thing.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#22

Post by torstenvl »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #21
torstenvl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's not what qualified immunity is. qualified immunity means government officials can violate your rights by doing obviously illegal things as long as no government official has previously been convicted for doing the exact same thing.

No. You fundamentally misunderstand qualified immunity. What you have repeated here, I assume unwittingly, is a dishonest description put forward by activists.

Qualified immunity is the principle that a public official acting in good faith cannot be held personally liable for an action that is later determined to violate the Constitution. No reasonable person, other than a nihilist, could possibly disagree with qualified immunity. (For those who insist on viewing everything through a political lens, qualified immunity was first articulated wrt police officers by the extremely progressive Warren Court in an 8-1 decision, the same court that gave us Miranda and struck down anti-miscegenation laws in Loving.)

What many people do reasonably disagree with is the shift in Harlow so that the official is presumed to be acting in good faith, and the person whose rights were violated has the burden of proving otherwise (by showing clearly applicable precedent).

A reasonable person can, and many reasonable people do, oppose Harlow and think it should be overturned. But it is not possible to oppose qualified immunity without also opposing functioning democracy.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#23

Post by yieldcrv »

yieldcrv wrote: post #2

Dear country, we voted that guy out of the LASD and also introduced the ability to sack the Sheriff before an election Yep, we literally never had any method of accountability of the LASD and this guy finally took that to an extreme Hope the new guy Luna is keeping up

Whats the matter with this post, to people browsing these comments and not finding it useful

The article is about the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department doing unconstitutional things under prior unaccountable leadership, getting only partially curbed by the court, and the post is about other checks and balances created in the wake of this lack of checks and balances

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#24

Post by mindslight »

mikece wrote: post #15
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 a…

> HR background check companies don't always filter out names in criminal reports who aren't charged with anything

This is its own problem that requires strong privacy laws. If innocent suspects aren't used as a plausibly-indicative red herring, something else will be.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#25

Post by mindslight »

torstenvl wrote: post #22
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not what qualified immunity is. qualified immunity means government officials can violate your rights by doing obviously illegal things as long as no government official has previously been convicted for doing the exact same thing.

No. You fundamentally misunderstand qualified immunity. What you have repeated here, I assume unwittingly, is a dishonest description put forward by activists. Qualified immunity is the principle that a public official acting in good faith cannot be held personally liable for an action that is later determined to violate the Constitution. No reasonable person, other than a nihilist, could possibly disagree with quali…

> Qualified immunity is the principle that a public official acting in good faith cannot be held personally liable for an action that is later determined to violate the Constitution. No reasonable person, other than a nihilist, could possibly disagree with qualified immunity

Actually no, it's perfectly reasonable to disagree with it as you've described. There is no analog for private companies - an employee can incorrectly think they're following the law, and end up being personally liable for actions they undertook in good faith for the company. Private companies get along just fine - in practice its not an impediment to companies accomplishing activities on the border of legality.

I do believe that the focus on qualified immunity is a bit of a red herring though. What really needs to be drastically curtailed is general sovereign immunity. If police arrest someone, bust up their home, hold them for days, etc, and it turns out they're innocent, the appropriate government needs to be held directly liable/responsible for those damages. The government/department can then sort out whether those damages were due to some employees not following written policies, and if so discipline them and subrogate the damages. Right now the damages caused by law enforcement are being left as an externality funded by a perverse reverse-lottery, so predictably the injustices keep growing.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#26

Post by gspencley »

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…

> and being illegal isn't the same thing as being a crime

I think in a very strict interpretation of what "lawful" and "criminal" means, this is likely true. There are civil infractions and there are "criminal offences." But most people, colloquially, equivocate "illegal" with "crime." And if the police engage in unlawful (illegal) activity, they can face penalty. So I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say. Someone would, of course, need to file a complaint in a court of law, but that doesn't mean that they were "permitted" to do it and can't face penalty as a result of ignoring their lawfully mandated restrictions.

Also recognize, and disclaimer IANAL, that it does not require the Supreme Court to rule on a constitutional violation. The Supreme Court, as I'm sure most of us know, do not have the capacity to take all cases that are presented to them. First a chain of appellate courts must rule after which the Supreme Court becomes the last available avenue, and they typically only accept the "interesting" constitutional challenges... where "was this a constitutional violation or not?" has been deemed ambiguous.

But "lower courts" can, and do often, rule on whether something was a constitutional violation.

So I guess the point is, the police cannot engage in constitutional violations with impunity, but of course in order for them to face penalty a complaint would have to filed and it would need to be taken to trial and the police found guilty.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#27

Post by vegetablepotpie »

mistrial9 wrote: post #20

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 "th…

I have not heard of the “ratchet effect”. Some research on ddg showed me the Collingridge dilemma, but that’s different because it’s about regulation of technology and not law enforcement adoption of tech. Can you point to an example?

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#28

Post by jcranmer »

torstenvl wrote: post #22
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not what qualified immunity is. qualified immunity means government officials can violate your rights by doing obviously illegal things as long as no government official has previously been convicted for doing the exact same thing.

No. You fundamentally misunderstand qualified immunity. What you have repeated here, I assume unwittingly, is a dishonest description put forward by activists. Qualified immunity is the principle that a public official acting in good faith cannot be held personally liable for an action that is later determined to violate the Constitution. No reasonable person, other than a nihilist, could possibly disagree with quali…

> Qualified immunity is the principle that a public official acting in good faith cannot be held personally liable for an action that is later determined to violate the Constitution. No reasonable person, other than a nihilist, could possibly disagree with qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity is the principle that an official cannot be sued for an action that isn't clearly shown to be unconstitutional. It shuts down a lawsuit before there is any fact finding as to whether or not the official was reasonably justified in their belief that their actions were constitutional.

Yes, being reasonably justified that actions were constitutional should be a valid defense. But qualified immunity isn't a defense, it's a vehicle to shunt cases out of the system before the question of defense is raised. And we already have a judicial mechanism to decide whether or not someone's actions were reasonable: pick 12 random people and ask them if they thought their actions were reasonable, aka, a jury trial. There's no need for qualified immunity.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#29

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#30

Post by [deleted] »

yieldcrv wrote: post #23
yieldcrv wrote: post #2

Dear country, we voted that guy out of the LASD and also introduced the ability to sack the Sheriff before an election Yep, we literally never had any method of accountability of the LASD and this guy finally took that to an extreme Hope the new guy Luna is keeping up

Whats the matter with this post, to people browsing these comments and not finding it useful The article is about the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department doing unconstitutional things under prior unaccountable leadership, getting only partially curbed by the court, and the post is about other checks and balances created in the wake of this lack of checks and balances

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