California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional • Hacker News Board

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#31

Post by snark42 » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

paws wrote: post #11

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.

It's the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule, you can thank the Supreme Court.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#32

Post by torstenvl » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 4:50 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #28

torstenvl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dow…

That is plainly false, as any yahoo with a PACER account can tell you. It also continues to conflate qualified immunity as a principle (which dates back in some form to 1789 and by that name specifically to 1967) with the presumption established in Harlow in 1982, despite my clear explanation above.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#33

Post by ROTMetro » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

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…

There was a case where it was ruled totally fine to feed inmates rotten food AS LONG AS if they asked they were then given human grade food. Here's the thing, asking comes with huge consequences (such as being put in a cell with notoriously aggressive Bob, then having your cell 'shaken down' for contraband every day and letting Bob know the cell is being targeted because you cause trouble). You should be able to go after a person knowingly serving food not fit for human consumption, but you can't, because precedent of this case now says it's OK (as long as you server human grade food on request which how can I prove they don't) so qualified immunity is to all Food Service Administrators from this precedent.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#34

Post by ROTMetro » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 6:38 PM UTC

torstenvl wrote: post #32

jcranmer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 dow…

That is plainly false, as any yahoo with a PACER account can tell you. It also continues to conflate qualified immunity as a principle (which dates back in some form to 1789 and by that name specifically to 1967) with the presumption established in Harlow in 1982, despite my clear explanation above.

As someone who went through the system you are wrong. Sure that might be a few cases ruled in your favor, but in the actual implementation of the rules as applied to those in the system you are incorrect. You are like the insurance company pointing to two cases where they approved treatment saying 'look, we don't deny treatment'.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#35

Post by ROTMetro » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 6:41 PM UTC

MereInterest wrote: post #13

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…

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.

As an inmate you don't have standing in 1983 cases (your only attack against qualified immunity) unless you can demonstrate actual harm. How can I do that? I don't own anything, my prison slave labour job isn't going to fire me and I don't get docked daily lost wages (off my $5 a month flat pay), so how do I prove actual damages?

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#36

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

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…

> The Fourth Amendment, for example, protects more narrowly against search in the context of criminal prosecution: no prosecution, no rights violation.

False.

Fourth Amendment violations can be the basis for civil liability (or in some cases criminal liability) for the offender, even if no prosecution occurs. Qualified immunity and other issues make this difficult sometimes, but that’s a separate issue from whether there is a violation of legal rights.

But the most familiar remedy for Fourth Amendment violations (the exclusionary rule) only applies to criminal prosecution, and only criminal prosecution of the party whose rights were violated (violating someone other than the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights will not result in exclusion of the evidence from a criminal case.)

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#37

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 6:44 PM UTC

kadoban wrote: post #5

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…

> 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 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,

It’s not.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#38

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

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.

> Of course, you could argue that qualified immunity has no constitutional or solid legal basis either

Qualified (for discretionary acts) and Absolute (for ministerial acts) immunity applies to government officers, not the government entity employing them.

In both cases, the theory is that, where the immunity applies, the government employer, but not the employee, is liable for whatever violation of rights occurred. (I think QI has a sensible justification but is applied overly broadly.)

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#39

Post by nceqs3 » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 6:59 PM UTC

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…

>because of public records laws, means the data becomes public

This is absolutely not how public records laws work. Look up the Privacy Act.

Re: California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional

#40

Post by CobrastanJorji » Thu, Apr 27, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #26

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…

> 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. S…

Say that a law says "No person may wear a green shirt."

Now say I go outside in a green shirt. I am now violating the law. If someone pointed this out and said, "that's not legal," they would be correct. A police officer or a court could compel me to change shirt, but I would never go to prison or be fined for wearing a green shirt because the law doesn't define any sort of penalty. It's not a misdemeanor. It's not a felony. It's just not legal.

Similarly, if government agents act in an unconstitutional manner, they are generally not committing any crimes. They are just doing something illegal. The police officers will not face any penalties besides perhaps a poor performance review on their job. The police office itself will not face any penalties besides perhaps, if there are enough serious violations, a DoJ investigation of some sort, which would at most aim to force them to stop doing illegal things.