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Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

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Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#51

Post by RHSeeger »

mjd wrote: post #39
plsbenice34 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excluding the evidence would incentivize police to stop choosing the most convenient interpretation of the law. They should have to try to make the most accurate interpretation, which means punishment when they are wrong. Just like for everyone else

No. In 2020 the police went to a magistrate judge to ask for a warrant. The judge issued the warrant. Five years later, another judge has determined that the warrant should not have been issued in the first place. That is not the fault of the police, and there is no reason to punish them for it.

> That is not the fault of the police, and there is no reason to punish them for it.

It's not punishing the police. It's not allowing them to use evidence that they shouldn't have been allowed to gather.

Fining them, firing them, and/or jailing them for breaking the law; those would be ways of punishing them. That's not what is being discussed here. Admittedly, we pretty much _never_ punish police no matter what they do, so it's kind of a moot point.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#52

Post by mjd »

thatguymike wrote: post #29

If this holds, can cops still ask for whether a specific phone number was present on a cell tower at a certain time? I can't tell if it's the breadth of the data collection that's unconsitutional because it catches lots of innocent people's data; or if it's the concept of using cell towers altogether.

It's the breadth. Searches have to be narrowly tailored to provide evidence of the specific crime being investigated. There's discussion of this on pages 12–13 of the judge's opinion.

https://plover.com/~mjd/misc/cell-tower-dump-opinion.pdf

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#53

Post by RHSeeger »

mjd wrote: post #42
ceejayoz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The police did not commit a crime here. They did, however, violate the Fourth Amendment. Per the court.

The Fourth Amendment was violated by the magistrate judge who issued the illegal warrant, not by the police officers who, acting in in good faith, executed it.

No, the judge told them they were allowed to do it. The act of doing it is what violated the fourth amendment. If they hadn't acted on the warrant, the fourth amendment wouldn't have been violated. The judge was _wrong_, but the police are the ones that violated the amendment.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#54

Post by some-guy »

Terr_ wrote: post #6
hiatus wrote: post #2

> U.S. District Juste Miranda M. Du rejected this argument, but wouldn’t suppress the evidence. “The Court finds that a tower dump is a search and the warrant law enforcement used to get it is a general warrant forbidden under the Fourth Amendment,” she said in a ruling filed on April 11. “That said, because the Court appears to be the first court within the Ninth Circuit to reach this conclusion and the good faith e…

Not only that, when they lie in conversations/interrogations, they can lie about what the law is , as well as what official acts can/will undertake. To me there is a fundamental difference between lies like: 1. "Your buddy in the next room already ratted you out." 2. "Sign this admission and you'll only get 6 months, tops. If you don't, we can seize your house and your mother will be living on the streets. "

When I was a child, I thought police had to go to law school. How else would you enforce the law if you didn't know what the law was?

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#55

Post by addicted »

ty6853 wrote: post #15
mjd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rule that illegally obtained evidence is inadmissible exists to disincentivize the police from obtaining evidence illegally. But if the police believed, in good faith, that a particular search was legal and reasonable, based on the fact that a judge authorized them to perform it, then excluding the resulting evidence doesn't serve that purpose. Update : This is not a new thing. The good-faith exception has been i…

If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted.

If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise and in some cases also be acquitted.

So this isn’t really a good argument even if we ignore the fact that it’s a non sequitur.

A better argument is that the good faith exception, while making sense in principle, can easily be abused by the police to make illegally obtained evidence look like it was done in good faith, and therefore the exception itself should be removed because of how difficult it is to actually gauge and enforce.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#56

Post by pcaharrier »

mjd wrote: post #38
flipnotyk wrote: post #4

"It's unconstitutional and illegal, but you're not being held accountable and you can still use the data." Yeah that tracks.

It is not reasonable to hold someone accountable for doing something illegal in 2020 that was only determined to be illegal in 2025. The police officers applied to a judge for a warrant. The judge gave them the warrant. Now another judge says that the warrant should not have been issued in the first place. How is that the police's fault? How would you hold them accountable?

This is the basic idea of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. The exclusionary rule was supposed to deter police misconduct (e.g., searching a house without a warrant, thereby violating the Fourth Amendment) by preventing them from using evidence they never should have had. But the deterrence rationale doesn't hold up that well when the police reasonably (and that's key) believed that they were acting lawfully.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#57

Post by mjd »

RHSeeger wrote: post #53
mjd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fourth Amendment was violated by the magistrate judge who issued the illegal warrant, not by the police officers who, acting in in good faith, executed it.

No, the judge told them they were allowed to do it. The act of doing it is what violated the fourth amendment. If they hadn't acted on the warrant, the fourth amendment wouldn't have been violated. The judge was _wrong_, but the police are the ones that violated the amendment.

“No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, … and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Judge Magit violated the amendment by issuing the warrant.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#58

Post by RHSeeger »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
ty6853 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted.

> If I believe, in good faith, I have not broken the law. I should not be convicted How often does this actually happen in criminal matters?

Hide some drugs in someone's luggage when they're traveling at an airport and then get back to me. There's tons of cases of people being arrested for things they either had no idea they doing or had no idea was illegal. And then even more where the police tack on lots of charges for someone that's already been arrested; for things that they had no idea they were a problem in the first place.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#59

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ty6853 wrote: post #43
__loam wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird concept to people in stem fields, but in law intent matters a lot. It's the difference between manslaughter and murder.

It apparently doesn't in one of the areas of which I have a high level interest. The ATF is constantly changing their mind on what a machine gun is, and if it is one, it is a strict liability crime. Not long ago a guy was put in jail for creating business-card sized metal sheets with the image of a 'lightning link' (machinegun conversion device) on it. Not the actual device, just a picture of it etched Up until the g…

Meanwhile, you can use bump-stocks as a redneck machine gun all day long.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#60

Post by aftbit »

ty6853 wrote: post #43
__loam wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a weird concept to people in stem fields, but in law intent matters a lot. It's the difference between manslaughter and murder.

It apparently doesn't in one of the areas of which I have a high level interest. The ATF is constantly changing their mind on what a machine gun is, and if it is one, it is a strict liability crime. Not long ago a guy was put in jail for creating business-card sized metal sheets with the image of a 'lightning link' (machinegun conversion device) on it. Not the actual device, just a picture of it etched Up until the g…

Are you talking about the AutoKeyCard case, Kristopher Ervin and Matthew Hoover? Ervin finally gets out of prison on 2025-05-03 and Hoover gets out on Christmas 2026.
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