Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 311 posts

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#291

Post by niam »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #213
gandreani wrote: post #207

It's such a little thing but while reading the opinion I see that the court (Kagan in this case?) makes a factual claim it provides SOURCES. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf "Modern cell phones, we observed a dozen years ago, are “such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” Riley v.…

Most SCOTUS opinions are rigorously sourced. They’re usually also well argued. The recent spate being an exception, in particular anything written by Alito.

They're rigorously sourced in that some set of underpaid clerks is tasked with surfacing their best guess as to what material is most relevant to the court, with optional fact checking competing for their time.

https://www.propublica.org/article/supreme-court-errors-are-...

So the sources exist, but whether they're quality is another question.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#292

Post by NoGravitas »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #210
harimau777 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't parallel construcction mean that judges actually don't care how evidence was collected? They can't possibly care that much if they are fine with a fig leaf like parallel construction.

Parallel construction means the judge doesn't know.

Or can at least plausibly pretend not to.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#293

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

autoexec wrote: post #30
petcat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been just leaving my phone at home lately. I recommend it.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#294

Post by autoexec »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #244
autoexec wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google told him that he would have to go to court to block the release of his identifying data to the police. He was not told what the request was about. At that time, he could only guess that it was related to the break in that happened near his home almost a year ago. A lawyer at that point was a very good idea. Especially since all it takes is an arrest to cause you to lose your job and make it very difficult to g…

Wouldn't the police have just looked at his location data and see that he lived nearby and rode his bike by often, and that he never stopped at the house?

The absolutely should have, but they didn't bother. They didn't even need to go back to review his history to figure out his patterns of activity. At the day of the crime he never stopped at the house and was in continuous motion.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#295

Post by gmiller123456 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #65
autoexec wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm surprised they'd even need to say that, let alone people who heard it were just learning it. I would imagine the overwhelming majority of cases don't involve forensic evidence. I've only had close involvement in a handful of cases that resulted in a conviction, but none involved forensic evidence. In one they took fingerprints (and the handle to our cash drawer, which they never returned), but that didn't result in a conviction.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#296

Post by teachrdan »

hackthemack wrote: post #86
alexpotato wrote: post #52

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…

When news broke about the affair, I remembered, 6 months prior, watching an episode of the Daily Show where Jon Stewart interviewed Paula Broadwell and they even made jokes about if her husband was jealous of her spending so much time interviewing David Petraeus. https://archive.org/details/COM_20120127_020000_The_Daily_Sh...

You missed mentioning the title of her book about General Patraeus: "All In."

That's an ironic biography name second only to the one about Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State football coach later convicted of child sexual abuse: "Touched".

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#297

Post by BeetleB »

mjevans wrote: post #223
rootusrootus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just leave it at home on your bedside table where you ought to be sleeping instead of out killing.

I have on at least two occasions forgotten my phone in my car at highly inconvenient times... One of which was just before a flight, for a vacation. I was amazed it had any battery life at all when I got back. Yes, this stuff does happen to real people doing normal things.

Sure, but that pattern isn't going to make the cops think you committed a crime. And if you flew out, there's plenty of other evidence you're elsewhere (airline information, credit card usage, etc).

To clarify, I'm not saying they used it against him in court (he didn't even have a trial). It did help in increasing their confidence in him as a suspect.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#298

Post by ecshafer »

Edman274 wrote: post #276
ecshafer wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling part of the government illegitimate is a very slippery slope to justifying trying to overthrow said government. You can say they are corrupt, you can disagree with policies, but saying illegitimate is cause for extreme responses.

Do you always judge the validity of a statement according to the implications of it being true, or do you get to do it just this once as a treat? Further, how does saying a court is "corrupt" not call for "extreme measures" but referring to it as "illegitimate" does? What's the meaningful difference?

Calling members of a court corrupt, means you can pursue legal action against them, write laws, impeach, etc. calling the court itself illegitimate, implies the government that put them into power is illegitimate. Calling government illegitimate is the first move of revolutionary groups.

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#299

Post by plagiarist »

tsimionescu wrote: post #263
plagiarist wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That interpretation is insane to me. If all it takes is, "haha, oops," to use evidence gained from an unconstitutional search, people do not actually have Fourth Amendment rights. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, knowing that civil asset forfeiture is a thing.

You have to consider the fact that it's really weird for everyone to know that evidence against you exists, but be forced to pretend it doesn't and hide it from the jury. It's not at all self-evident that this is the only, or the best possible, remedy against the government abusively collecting this evidence from you. Ultimately it's very important for the good functioning of society that guilty parties are appropria…

I guess I am a 4A absolutist.

The original case is clear that that person's rights were violated. It certainly is reasonable for the officers to believe they could conduct a search in that case, so they should not have consequences. (Officers that do unreasonably violate rights should experience consequences, they currently don't.) But there's nothing in there curing the violation of rights.

It's so weird to me that this is possible. If that happened with other rights, it'd feel like, "oh, yeah, definitely these soldiers shouldn't have been allowed to live here. They do now, though, and will continue to. Sorry."

Re: US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections

#300

Post by CyberDildonics »

Maxatar wrote: post #290
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean of course if not 10,000 people could stand in a room, watch someone murder another, and then all 10,000 come and testify exactly who it was and what the jury would not be allowed to convict?

If 10000 people witnessed a crime for which there was no physical evidence present, yeah I'd say something is very suspicious and would not convict.

If 10,000 people witnessed someone pushing someone off a rooftop, you wouldn't convict that person?
Post reply on HN