4th Amendment Thread

[Okeefenokee]

(shit source, I'm sorry)

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experie ... iracy.html

The police is spying on and blocking Internet access to North Dakota pipeline protesters through cell site simulators without a warrant

So maybe it's not surprising that someone is trying to kick Standing Rock off the internet. (And yes, we've got evidence to back us up. None of this is loopy conspiracy talk.) We first encountered the idea through hearsay, via a man we met at the big camp, in a large tent filled with U.S. military veterans. He'd been a 25 Bravo in the Army -- an information technology specialist. He was the first to allege that the planes flying over were equipped with what he called "scramblers," which "fed white noise into the cell signals" to interfere with internet access at Standing Rock and "keep information from getting out."

Credit to Dan for being one of the guys that would have talked about this years ago, but not today. It's something.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

INTERNET ARCHIVE SUCCESSFULLY FENDS OFF SECRET FBI ORDER

The FBI has been issuing NSLs since the 1980s, but the FBI considered NSLs during that time to be of limited value for a number of reasons, according to a DoJ Inspector General’s report issued in 2007. But the Patriot Act, passed directly after the 9/11 attacks, lowered the legal standard for using an NSL and widened the kinds of records they could obtain, thereby helping to expand their use. In 2000, prior to the Patriot Act, the FBI issued just 8,500 NSLs to businesses. But in 2003, the next year for which statistics are available, the FBI issued nearly 40,000. With that expansion and the extensive secrecy around NSLs due to the gag orders, came abuse. The Inspector General found that the FBI misused NSLs on a number of occasions and underreported their use to Congress.
...
“It is a matter of public interest that the FBI continues to issue NSLs that incorrectly inform recipients that their ability to challenge nondisclosure requirements is limited to a single petition per year,” Crocker wrote in his September letter to the FBI.

The FBI acknowledged the mistake in its response to him earlier this month. Evidently, it’s a mistake the FBI made repeatedly in the 18 months since the USA Freedom Act was passed; the FBI told Crocker that it would be correcting the text of the template that FBI agents use to create NSLs.

“That could be as many as 20,000 NSLs that were incorrect,” Crocker notes.

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/01/int ... inst-nsls/

Seems to be a little 1st and a little 4th amendment in this, but I thought it was interesting.

[de officiis]

A "mistake" ...right.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

It does not fill me with confidence that my government is trying to prove they aren't sinister by convincing me they are incompetent.

[de officiis]

It does not fill me with confidence that my government is trying to prove they aren't sinister by convincing me they are incompetent.

Well, probably a little of both, along with some who are trying to do the right thing.

[de officiis]

The U.S. intelligence community will soon disclose an estimate of the number of Americans whose electronic communications have been caught in . . . online surveillance programs intended for foreigners, U.S. lawmakers said in a letter seen by Reuters on Friday.

The estimate . . . is expected to be made public as early as next month, the letter said.

Its disclosure would come as Congress is expected to begin debate in the coming months over whether to reauthorize or reform the so-called surveillance authority, known as Section 702, a provision that was added to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2008.

"The timely production of this information is incredibly important to informed debate on Section 702 in the next Congress— and, without it, even those of us inclined to support reauthorization would have reason for concern," said the letter signed by 11 lawmakers, all members of the House Judiciary Committee.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-c ... 452FX?il=0

[de officiis]

State scans Mass. license photos to find matches with suspects

The millions of photos that have been taken for Massachusetts-issued driver’s licenses and other official ID cards are regularly scanned using facial recognition software that hunts for matches with pictures of suspects sought by law enforcement.

A growing number of law enforcement agencies across the country are running similar searches. Critics say the practice raises the specter of privacy invasion and warn that inaccurate matches could subject innocent people to unwarranted investigation.

They also say that government has moved quietly, providing little, if any, notice to the public before using such technology.

“When you go to the DMV to get your license, you do not expect your photo to be part of what has essentially become a law enforcement database used for criminal investigations,” said Kade Crockford of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

I'm all for more privacy, but is that true? What were your "expectations," if any, when you got that mug shot at the DMV?

[Okeefenokee]

State scans Mass. license photos to find matches with suspects

The millions of photos that have been taken for Massachusetts-issued driver’s licenses and other official ID cards are regularly scanned using facial recognition software that hunts for matches with pictures of suspects sought by law enforcement.

A growing number of law enforcement agencies across the country are running similar searches. Critics say the practice raises the specter of privacy invasion and warn that inaccurate matches could subject innocent people to unwarranted investigation.

They also say that government has moved quietly, providing little, if any, notice to the public before using such technology.

“When you go to the DMV to get your license, you do not expect your photo to be part of what has essentially become a law enforcement database used for criminal investigations,” said Kade Crockford of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

I'm all for more privacy, but is that true? What were your "expectations," if any, when you got that mug shot at the DMV?

AM I BEING DETAINED?

[KerningChameleon]

Yahoo email scan shows U.S. spy push to recast constitutional privacy
Dec 21, 2016

Yahoo Inc's secret scanning of customer emails at the behest of a U.S. spy agency is part of a growing push by officials to loosen constitutional protections Americans have against arbitrary governmental searches, according to legal documents and people briefed on closed court hearings.

The order on Yahoo from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) last year resulted from the government's drive to change decades of interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment right of people to be secure against "unreasonable searches and seizures," intelligence officials and others familiar with the strategy told Reuters.

The unifying idea, they said, is to move the focus of U.S. courts away from what makes something a distinct search and toward what is "reasonable" overall.

The basis of the argument for change is that people are making much more digital data available about themselves to businesses, and that data can contain clues that would lead to authorities disrupting attacks in the United States or on U.S. interests abroad.

While it might technically count as a search if an automated program trawls through all the data, the thinking goes, there is no unreasonable harm unless a human being looks at the result of that search and orders more intrusive measures or an arrest, which even then could be reasonable.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo ... SKBN14A25F

[de officiis]

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS FOR NONRESIDENT ALIENS: A DOCTRINAL AND NORMATIVE ARGUMENT

Alec Walen, J.D., Ph.D - 8 Drexel L. Rev. 53 (Fall 2015)

Abstract:

The decision in Boumediene v Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008), held that nonresident aliens (NRAs) detained for years in Guantanamo have a constitutional right to bring a habeas petition to challenge their detention. But the larger issue of constitutional rights for NRAs remains unresolved. Do NRAs outside of Guantanamo have constitutional rights? If so, do they enjoy more substantial protections, such as those under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments?

I argue here that the doctrine remains unclear, the text is likewise unclear, originalist arguments should carry little force, but the normative argument is clear. As a condition of the legitimacy of U.S. law, NRAs must enjoy a range of constitutional rights that protect them from unjust harm at the hands of the United States.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=2533579