Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional • Hacker News Board

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#91

Post by anigbrowl » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

mjd wrote: post #13

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…

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…

Agreed. Part of the problem here is that there are few consequences (other than perhaps non-promotion) for judges who issue bad warrants, and we don't have good information on how many warrant applications are rejected or wrongly granted.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#92

Post by nzeid » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #85

I assume this will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Is issuing a warrant to do blanket search of cell tower data unconstitutional?

I am not a lawyer but here it goes:

If the target of the warrant itself is the carrier/telecom - probably constitutional, but I imagine there'd need to be a pretty good explanation.

If the target of the warrant itself is a single customer of the carrier/telecom - Absolutely unconstitutional.

E.g. You can't get the transaction history of every customer of a bank just because one of its customers is a suspect.

(Edited for clarity.)

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#93

Post by autoexec » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

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.

Really we should be punishing the judge who approved it in the first place. A judge that violates the rights of the people shouldn't be allowed to be a judge.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#94

Post by autoexec » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 9:55 PM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #58

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Hell, there are tons of examples of people being arrested for things that aren't crimes at all, and even for acts that are constitutionally protected. Police don't care because they know they'll get away with it (and might even get a paid vacation) when the case against the person who was arrested and likely lost their job as a result gets thrown out. If the unlawfully arrested person is lucky and/or wealthy enough to afford a good lawyer they might get a decent amount of tax payer money out of it.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#95

Post by ren_engineer » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

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…

cell tower dump and general geofence warrants to Google/Apple were how many Jan 6th protesters were found and charged. Courts threw out all their arguments about this very issue. This is standard practice and was celebrated as cops being smart

here's a Washington Post article lamenting that Google was cutting back on how long they hold location data and how hundreds of people wouldn't have been prosecuted without it- https://archive.ph/r7afb

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#96

Post by redeux » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

some-guy wrote: post #54

Terr_ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I took a class in college from a lawyer who said he started as a cop but wanted to understand the law better so he went to law school at night. When he graduated the chief (or whatever) told him he couldn’t practice law and be a cop, and even though he had no intention of actually being an attorney, they let him go.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#97

Post by dataflow » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:09 PM UTC

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…

You seem to be misrepresenting the situation. Ignorance of the law is not the defense they are invoking here.

Ignorance of the law is when you claim you didn't follow the law because you were unaware it existed.

This is a case where the court believes police did know the law and did try to follow it in good faith -- that's how they got to their conclusion that it's constitutional -- and that no court had yet reached a different conclusion in that district, until now.

These are distinctly different situations.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#98

Post by autoexec » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:10 PM UTC

IncreasePosts wrote: post #31

So the warrant is forbidden - could the police just ask nicely for the data and have telcos provide it?

If police just ask they'll usually be rejected, but police have found it a lot easier to offer to pay for that data and companies have been happy to turn it over while stuffing their pockets with taxpayer money.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#99

Post by AdrianB1 » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:10 PM UTC

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…

In most cases police is seen as serving the government and having all sorts of protections from sovereign immunity (confirmed in a case when a SWAT team partly destroyed the wrong house), qualified immunity (invented by SCOTUS, there is no such law) and practical legal immunity based on the fact that DAs rarely prosecute and even juries rarely find them guilty when prosecuted. This is why the ignorance of the law is accepted in so many cases as a defense for police, but not for citizens.

Re: Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional

#100

Post by AdrianB1 » Fri, Apr 18, 2025, 10:15 PM UTC

multjoy wrote: post #77

kevinventullo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the police genuinely believed that what they were doing was legal, as they did in this case, relying on established legal precedent, then throwing out the evidence doesn't disincentivize anything This is obviously false. It would disincentivize the police from collecting evidence without first ensuring that the method of collection was legal.

They did. They went to a judge and got a warrant.

That does not make it legal and it does not eliminate the responsibility of asking for the warrant and using it.

Not saying there was a conspiracy here, but bad judges exist and arranging for a warrant is possible even for honest judges. If you are a policeman and you want to kill someone, get a judge to sign a "no knock" warrant, get in their house and shoot them, it happened many times; there were cases when the warrant was not even for the address of the poor guy that was killed and last year the warrant was for someone that borrowed a lawn mower from the judge who signed it and did not return it. So the warrant excuse is not so good.