Washington Supreme Court determines that public has a right to police investigations

From KAYU:

The Washington Supreme Court issued a landmark decision Thursday concerning an individual’s right to privacy and the public's right to obtain government records through public records requests.

Specifically, the court ruled that two Washington cities, Puyallup and Mercer Island, must disclose two investigative reports — a criminal investigation and an internal investigation — of a police officer involved in alleged sexual misconduct.

The case was initiated after a woman, Kim Koeing, alleged that Bainbridge Island police officer Steven Cain sexually assaulted her during a traffic stop in September 2007.

Critics say bill co-sponsored by Wasserman Schultz, Deutch could ‘undermine’ Fourth Amendment

From the Florida Independent:

A new bill intended to crack down on child pornography and co-sponsored by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Pembroke Pines, and Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, is drawing criticism from Internet privacy advocates.

Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and Deutch co-sponsored the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, approved by the House Judiciary Committee on July 28.

The bill would amend U.S. code covering the obscene representation of children and financial transactions that involve child pornography, as well as penalties for child exploitation offenses. It also calls for Internet providers to ”retain for a period of at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account.

Jim Porter: Can TSA airport security search for contraband?

From the SierraSun.com:

We have all been through airport security. With my knee replacement I get “wanded” every time with the full-on pat-down search. Getting to know the security guys up close and personal.

What if the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, while looking for weapons or explosives, discover pot or child pornography or some other contraband? Can you be arrested? In other countries you would be arrested on the spot, but in the U.S. we have the Fourth Amendment. Simon McCarty knows.

Monitoring School-Issued Email Accounts

From TeachPrivacy.coms:

A recent case provides some guidance about when schools can monitor email accounts they issue to students. In Reichert v. Elizabethtown College, 2011 WL 3438318 (E.D.Pa. August 5, 2011), a troubled student (Christopher Reichert) had a heated exchange with the chairman of the education department, Dr. Carroll Tyminski. Afterwards, Tyminski arranged for Reichert's email account to be monitored.

Judge Actually Recognizes The 4th Amendment: Says Police Can't Get Location Info From Telcos To Arrest You

From Techdirt:

With all the reports of law enforcement collecting tons of location info from telcos without a warrant, as well as a bunch of court rulings that seem to chip away at what's left of the 4th Amendment, it's somewhat surprising to see a magistrate judge say that police cannot use a warrant to find out your location from a mobile operator, for the purpose of arresting you.

When Is It OK to Take People's DNA Without Their Consent?

From The Atlantic:

If you're walking down the street and a police officer wants to swab your cheek for a DNA sample, you can refuse. But if you're convicted of a felony, you can't. At what point in the criminal process do you lose that right?

In California, until last week, the answer was the moment you were arrested for a felony. But a California state court has struck down the state statute that allowed such DNA collection, saying the measure 'unreasonably intrudes on such arrestees' expectation of privacy and is invalid under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.'

The decision comes at a crucial time in the legal battle over DNA evidence: Last summer, a three-judge panel on the federal Ninth Circuit heard arguments about California's law and has yet to issue its opinion. This fall, the circuit will sit en banc -- that means all of the judges not just three of them -- to decide whether a very similar federal law is constitutional. Another circuit court has already decided that it is. If the two circuits disagree (or even if they don't), the issue could come before the Supreme Court soon.

Courts Clash on Taking DNA Upon Arrest

From the WSJ.com:

Laws allowing DNA samples to be taken from people who are arrested—even those who haven't been charged—are sparking a passionate debate in the courts, pitting privacy concerns against crime fighting, and setting the stage for what could be a high-profile battle in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cheek swabs or blood samples from those arrested for felonies offer law enforcement officials unique identifying tags, much like fingerprints or bar codes on products. These tags are recorded in state and national databases and can be used later to match samples from the scenes of crimes that haven't been solved.

The practice of taking fingerprints of suspects upon arrest and storing them has been used for decades and has yet to face a serious constitutional challenge, according to David Kaye, a law professor at Penn State University and an expert on DNA evidence. And nearly every state in the union allows for DNA samples to be taken from at least some convicted felons.

RIC airport protester, federal officials present arguments in lawsuit

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Authorities involved in the arrest of a protester who removed his shirt and pants at a security checkpoint at Richmond International Airport were doing their jobs and acted appropriately, a government attorney argued Wednesday in Richmond federal court.

Carlotta P. Wells, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, argued in favor of a motion to dismiss Aaron B. Tobey's lawsuit, which claims his constitutional rights were violated. Wells said Tobey had made his point by removing his shirt to display words from the Fourth Amendment written on his torso but went too far when he disobeyed a command to pass through a security scanner.

But Anand Agneshwar, an attorney representing Tobey in his lawsuit against airport and federal officials, said the 21-year-old Charlottesville man obeyed the commands of authorities. Agneshwar said it was the authorities who went too far by detaining Tobey for 90 minutes or longer with his hands cuffed behind his back.

NYPD's Social Media Unit Will Track Criminals On Facebook, Twitter

From the Huffington Post:

The NYPD has formed a new social media unit, The New York Daily News reports, to catch criminals who use Facebook and Twitter to announce law-breaking plans or to brag about their latest crime.

In June, an overcrowded house party in East New York, Brooklyn that was advertised on Facebook as 'Freaky Friday' ended in a shooting that left one man dead and seven injured.

After that incident Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters 'We look at social networking. We’re very much focused on weekend parties, the type of parties that happened last weekend, and we visit them ahead of time. But not every one of these parties happen at a place we can readily identify... Our gang division, our borough personnel look at party advertisements. A lot of these things are at peoples’ apartments.'

Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many people say they're not worried. 'I've got nothing to hide,' they declare. 'Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and then you don't deserve to keep it private.'

The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for security.

The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example, the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the government declares: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear." Variations of nothing-to-hide arguments frequently appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews, and other forums. One blogger in the United States, in reference to profiling people for national-security purposes, declares: "I don't mind people wanting to find out things about me, I've got nothing to hide! Which is why I support [the government's] efforts to find terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!"

Court Rules That Police Cannot Use Warrants to Obtain Cell Phone Location of Person Who is Subject of Arrest Warrant

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

Imagine the police have an arrest warrant for a crime suspect, and they want to find the suspect to arrest him. They happen to know the suspect’s cell phone number, so they want to go to the phone company and have the phone company tell the police the location of the suspect’s phone. The phone company refuses to let the police get that information without a warrant, so the police police go to a judge and apply for a search warrant based on the probable cause to believe that the location of the phone will help them execute the arrest warrant. Here’s the interesting question: Should the judge sign the warrant application and issue the warrant? Or should the judge deny the warrant application?

On August 3, Magistrate Judge Susan K. Gauvey issued a fascinating opinion on this novel question: IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR AN ORDER AUTHORIZING DISCLOSURE OF LOCATION INFORMATION OF A SPECIFIED WIRELESS TELEPHONE, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 85638 (D.Md. 2011). Her answer: The Judge must deny the warrant application, as location information is broadly protected by the Fourth Amendment and government cannot use warrants to find out the location of people who have warrants out for their arrest. The timing of the case is extremely unusual, as it seems the case is moot and this is only an advisory opinion. If I understand the timing, Magistrate Judge Gauvey denied the application over a year ago, and the government was able to arrest the suspect some other way in the meantime. Judge Gauvey decided to hand down an opinion on the legal issue anyway, appointed defense counsel to argue for defense interests, and now, a year later, has handed down the opinion on why she denied that application back in 2010.

Political activist to file complaint against DMV

From myFOXOrlando:

Political activist Charlie Klein hands out copies of the United States Constitution everyday.

'We've brought 1,500 and given out 1,000,' he says.

He's concerned the State of Florida is violating the rights of its citizens, specifically the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, when selling information collected through driver's license applications. 'We shall be secure in our papers and in our houses,' he adds.

The Fourth Amendment pertains to searches and seizures and reads, 'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'

A Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles spokesperson says the state is selling public records, not private information. Those records include one's name, date of birth and vehicle registration information.