> I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery. You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect and force you spend a bunch of money defending yourself. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike... Hopefully rulings like this make that scenario a little less likely to happen, but it doesn't stop it…
one of the more fun things I learned during criminal court in Texas is that the absence of forensic evidence cannot exonerate an individual. The prosecutor and the judge covered that despite not having any forensic evidence, the jury would still be expected to be able to convict the defendant. If you weren't OK with that you weren't eligible to serve on a jury.
Was your prior assumption that forensic evidence must exist in every case—and that if it doesn’t, then there’s no way to convince a jury of someone’s guilt?
As in, as long as I clean up really well afterward, I can pretty much do what I want?
With the exception of citizens vs united, I think most of the decisions of the "conservative" court have been along the lines that congress should do its job. I don't see how all this turns out well for normal people, but if it does, I think congress will have to be much stronger than it was within the federal government, and the federal government will have to be much weaker than it was. The structural problems are…
I agree in general, but this is also why I say allowing authoritarianism through technicality. They know by punting to Congress, a body that is completely paralyzed, what the practical outcome of that ruling is.
I agree that motive is likely in at least one justice. But at the same time, if they really wanted to get back to original principles, they would have to take a wrecking ball to virtually every agency without being able to provide any substitute for the load bearing bits. I think these artificially narrow rulings are what some of the justices think is the middle ground to work in that direction without bringing the roof down. Thomas in particular has advocated for simply taking out the walls and trusting congress and the states will somehow fix everything and it isn't their problem. I think his opinions have occasionally been horribly flawed, but I see his vision and get what he is hoping for. I suspect something like that is the only way a representative democracy could recur in the US. Right now, states with strong geographic bents towards authoritarianism can use power of the federal executive to strengthen their position. If the federal executive had no agencies and was powerless the way Thomas suggests, those states wouldn't have much impact. But that entails acknowledging the entirety of the federal bureaucracy is unconstitutional and creating all sorts of power vacuums. Who knows how that would turn out? I increasingly think it couldn't be worse than the likely end state of a federal autocracy if we don't.
I always like to mention how Paula Broadwell was identified as David Petraeus' mistress as it's a good example of how even without a phone you can still be identified. - FBI had three distinct IPs linked to emails - They geolocated those back to 3 different hotels - They pulled the guest list from each of the hotels - Did a "join" on them and the only guest at all 3 was Broadwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_B…
It's also a good demonstration how probable cause is supposed to work.
In this case, the subpoena probably looked something like "this email must have been sent by one of your guests, so give us the guest list and we'll cross check and find the guy".
Contrast with the geofence subpoena. "Hey maybe some small % of people carry a phone that might send its location to you, can we check if they did?" It's ludicrous.
If it is reasonable to have your privacy in a public place, does this mean that products like Flock which indiscriminately violate your privacy would now require a warrant for law enforcement to access (currently they do not)?
> If it is reasonable to have your privacy in a public place
I don't think it's reasonable to have privacy in a public place. All other arguments follow from there.
What do you think should be "private" when you step outside your home?
There's a 94% chance the EO is struck down on polymarket.
And what are the odds in Vegas? How is the opinion of a bunch of gamblers on polymarket relevant?
Presumably the justices (or their clerks) have told their friends how they're going to rule, and their friends have told their friends, and that's made the market. Or that's supposed to be the value prop of Polymarket.
There's precedent. Roberts was so angry that someone leaked the Dobbs decision that he spearheaded the investigation that found that nobody would admit to leaking and there's nothing they can do.
I don't think it's implausible that an Echo would have an internal list of trusted Bluetooth devices and their last date of connectivity.
The original claim is: > all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders which is just not how this stuff works. I'd believe it if, say, debug-level logs were being recorded locally. But that would be an incredibly stupid way to burn through your flash storage. But that's besides the point. A record of the last date of connectivity for trusted devices is an…
My car shows "last seen" on its Bluetooth connections. The murderer in this case was an invited friend; it's hardly implausible he's connected to Bluetooth there.
> I'm interested in evidence that this type of data extraction took place.
That they obtained access to the Echo's internals via Amazon is evidence. It sounds like you want proof of a very particular bit of data being in it, which I'd guess the FBI etc. aren't going to provide here.
one of the more fun things I learned during criminal court in Texas is that the absence of forensic evidence cannot exonerate an individual. The prosecutor and the judge covered that despite not having any forensic evidence, the jury would still be expected to be able to convict the defendant. If you weren't OK with that you weren't eligible to serve on a jury.
Was your prior assumption that forensic evidence must exist in every case—and that if it doesn’t, then there’s no way to convince a jury of someone’s guilt? As in, as long as I clean up really well afterward, I can pretty much do what I want?
I think you're missing the slippery slope that this goes down. The criminal charges were way too low, given the alleged actions. The state admitted it had absolutely no forensic evidence. The judge was perfectly fine with this and selecting a jury that was OK convicting in this circumstance. This pretty quickly pretty us down a path of "you're guilty of at least one crime since you've been indicted, maybe a more serious one if we have some evidence".
I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery. I believe this is similar to how they nabbed the Washington State University murderer. The feds compelled Amazon to give them all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders and were able to correlate it to other devices their suspect's phone had been visible to.
> I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery. You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect and force you spend a bunch of money defending yourself. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike... Hopefully rulings like this make that scenario a little less likely to happen, but it doesn't stop it…
There's no indication that this guy had to hire a lawyer or actually do anything. The same location data that put him near the scene/time of the crime would also absolve him. I guess it's sad that he felt the need to pay for a lawyer.
> [E]ven if there had been a violation of the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement officials had acted in good faith. How is this even remotely a possibility?
It just means they were completely transparent with the court when getting the data, and believed themselves it was lawful. What’s hard to believe about that? They clearly put some effort into minimising the collateral privacy intrusions.
In retrospect, the part I quoted is very unclear for what I intended. I should have added more.
What's hard to believe is the data is apparently still allowed in the case. Like... how?
Yep. And this hypocritical bench has had a pattern of ruling sensibly on minor issues like this just before ruling with torturous rationalizations to strip rights from people on larger issues. Feels like there's about to be some pure bullshit spewing from the right flank of this illegitimate court. I'd dearly love to be wrong about this, but I'm not holding out hope. Until alito and thomas are impeached for unconstit…
There's a 94% chance the EO is struck down on polymarket.
It's disturbing that the statistic you cite does give me hope (if true). But if I had an account, I'd still put $50 against it. I'm cynical enough to at least entertain the possibility that these corrupt dickheads have let the market get that lopsided as a way to cash in on top of their odious ruling (by way of bribes after they make other people richer).