Category Archives: Fourth Amendment

HARLINGEN, Texas (KVEO) Governor Greg Abbott signed into law one of the strictest limits on abortion in the whole country on May 19.

The new Texas law, which goes into effect on September 1, would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually around six weeks. That is typically before women even know theyre pregnant.

Zaena Zamora, Executive Director of the Frontera Fund, says similar six-week abortion bans have been tried before.

Other states have tried to pass similar six-week bans, and theyve all been struck down by the lower courts because the six weeks ban is unconstitutional, said Zamora.

Legal experts say the precedent for abortion has already been set with Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Zamora said that this case would almost assuredly be challenged in court as well.

Rick Barrera, an attorney in Harlingen, said that legal scholars tend to uphold precedent in cases like these.

You have that religious and freedom of expression to stand up to a government situation, that same thing has weight and balance with the fourth amendment of your own personal privacy, said Barrera.

The Texas Right to Life applauded the move by Governor Abbott but said a constitutional amendment may be necessary to make the decision permanent.

The new law wont go into effect for a few months, and pro-choice groups wont let up their fight in the interim.

Frontera fund and our sibling funds, the other funds in Texas, were going to continue fighting for abortion access in the state, and were not going to stop doing what were doing, said Zamora.

Read the original post:
Pro-choice group weighs in on Texas new abortion laws - KGBT-TV

THE TENTH Amendment of the United States Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791.

The amendment is part of the Bill of Rights which is the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution.

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The 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution reads, in full, "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Some amendments, like the First Amendment or the Fourth Amendment, are very straightforward in what rights they guarantee to their citizens.

But other amendments, like the Second Amendment and the Third Amendment, are open to interpretation.

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The 10th Amendment explicitly states that the federal government's powers are limited strictly to what's stated in the Constitution.

And this was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Sprague case.

In this 1931 case, the defendants were trying to get out of being charged under the National Prohibition Act.

They argued that because the 18th Amendment hadn't been ratified in their state, the government was violating the 10th Amendment by indicting them.

"Constitutionalists" argue, however, that the 10th Amendment ensures that state's rights and power to the people is tantamount to everything else.

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But others argue that the 10th Amendment merely shows that there are limits on the federal government's powers, especially in cases where the government can be seen as "overstepping its boundaries."

President Joe Biden put the 10th Amendment back in the news with his American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

In March 2021, states were told that they cannot use pandemic funds to lower taxes.

They were told this as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

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In response to this mandate, 16 states filed a lawsuit challenging that restriction as unconstitutional.

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States like Ohio, Arizona, Missouri and Alabama are currently in federal court stating that the Biden administration overstepped their bounds and violated the 10th Amendment by telling them what they can and can't do with their money.

But there is some debate as to whether the Act actually tells the states what to do as a matter of law.

And if it's proven that the Act does not violate states' rights, there is no violation of the 10th Amendment.

See the article here:
What is The 10th Amendment?... - The Sun (US)

Opinion analysis ByLenese Herbert on May 17, 2021 at 4:20 pm

Update (May 18, 8:15 p.m.): This article has been expanded with additional analysis.

On Monday, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Caniglia v. Strom, which unanimously held that a lower courts extension of Cady v. Dombrowskis community caretaking exception into the home defied the logic and holding of Cady, as well as violated the Fourth Amendments warrant requirement. With the courts unanimity in Caniglia, the home remains the most sacred space under the Fourth Amendment; its sanctity literally houses its privilege. Sans warrant, exigency or consent, governmental search and seizure within it is unconstitutional.

During an August 2015 argument with his wife, Edward Caniglia offered her one of his unloaded guns and requested that she put him out of his misery. Instead, she threatened to call 911. After the couples argument continued, she left the marital home to overnight at a hotel. When she returned the next day, she enlisted Cranston, Rhode Islands police department to perform a wellness check on her husband. They did. They also arranged transportation for Edward to obtain a psychiatric evaluation at a local hospital. He agreed to go, but only after officers purportedly agreed not to confiscate his weapons. However, as soon as he left, officers apparently by deceiving his wife entered the Caniglia home and seized Caniglias handguns and ammunition. Caniglia sued, alleging that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit sided with the officers by relying on Cady, a 1973 decision that upheld the warrantless caretaking search of a car that had been in an accident.

The courts opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, was devoid of the fearsome, compelling specter raised in the briefing and during argument regarding the potential for troubling eventualities for instance, that Caniglia may have harmed himself or his wife (or, perhaps, other innocent/intervening victims). A pithy four pages long, the opinion was unanimous and unambiguous: If police do not have the homeowners consent, an exigent circumstance, or a judicial warrant authorizing a search, then no version of Cadys car exception applies to police entry into the home under the Fourth Amendment. What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes, Thomas wrote.

As always with realty and, per Caniglia, the courts Fourth Amendment jurisprudence location matters. Specifically, the location of Cadys warrantless search and seizure a post-accident, routine search of an intoxicated, off-duty officers damaged and impounded car simply cannot compare to a search of and seizure within a home. Governmental searches of vehicles regularly occur via exceptions to the Fourth Amendments warrant requirement; a myriad of decisions have constitutionalized warrantless searches of vehicles, their compartments, their containers and even their occupants. Not one of these warrantless exceptions is available for the home.

Accordingly, caretaking under Cady is not carte blanche for police to search or seize within the home, nor do their caretaking duties create a standalone doctrine that justifies warrantless searches and seizures in the home, Thomas wrote. Cady, itself, he noted, drew an unmistakable distinction between vehicles and homes, constitutionally embedding the exception outside the home.

That police may engage in a myriad of civic community caretaking functions did not move the court off its jurisprudential bright line. Certainly, such functions give texture to the modern, sometimes complex, role of policing. They do not, however, supplant the constitutional sanctity of the home. Accordingly, the Caniglia court declined the opportunity to expand Cadys community caretaking exception and permit warrantless entry into the home.

The court vacated the 1st Circuits judgment and sent the case back to the lower court for further proceedings consistent with the opinion.

Notwithstanding the courts unanimous decision, there were three concurring opinions. Though ranging in length (from one paragraph to longer than the courts opinion), they, too, evidenced unanimity, given that each identified the jurisprudential play in what defines an emergency or exigent circumstances.

In a single concurring paragraph, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justice Stephen Breyer, noted that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit warrantless entries when there is a need to assist persons who are seriously injured or threatened with such injury. Warrantless entries into the home are justified where there is an objectively reasonable basis for believing that medical assistance was needed, or persons were in danger.

Similarly, Justice Samuel Alitos concurrence seemed to redefine determinative concepts. First, it minimized community caretaking as a Fourth Amendment category, stating that there is no overarching community caretaking doctrine nor a special Fourth Amendment rule for a broad category of cases involving community caretaking. Hmmm.

Perhaps given the Caniglia courts unambiguous limitation of the community caretaking exception to cars, Alito saw the fruitlessness of further beating a dead horse (or rescuing a treed cat?). Whatever the reason, his concurrence warned the court that it should not assume that the Fourth Amendments command of reasonableness applies in the same way to everything that might be viewed as falling into this broad category of cases (which, apparently and per his concurrence, does not even exist). What does seem to exist are searches and seizures conducted for non-law-enforcement purposes. Alito cites as examples states suicide prevention and red flag laws, which allow police to enter a home and seize weapons to be used for the purpose of suicide or inflicting harm on innocent persons. Strangely, Alito criticized Caniglia for not taking on these laws before the court, yet praised the court for not engaging or deciding the constitutionality of these laws pursuant to the restrictions of the Fourth Amendment, which may or may not be appropriate for use. But, if Caniglia failed to properly raise these and a unanimous Court failed to mention them at all, why did Alitos concurrence see fit to address them at length?

But it is Justice Brett Kavanaughs concurrence now that Caniglia expressly limits the community caretaking exception to cars that plainly portends what the other concurrences make cryptic (Roberts, joined by Breyer) or confusing (Alito):

[T]he Courts exigency precedents, as I read them, permit warrantless entries when police officers have an objectively reasonable basis to believe that there is a current, ongoing crisis for which it is reasonable to act now If someone is at risk of serious harm and it is reasonable for officers to intervene now, that is enough for the officers to enter.

Again: this is not what Caniglia, or any other court decision, has ever held. Yet, per Kavanaughs concurrence, the court, going forward, is now perfectly poised to redefine the exigent circumstances doctrine as applied to emergency aid situations anew, expanding the exceptions imprimatur in ways that would allow warrantless, in-home police searches and seizures. Relying upon the pitched examples heard at argument regarding the parade of horribles that included suicide threats, as well as absent or fallen senior citizens, Kavanaugh queried: If officers knock on the homes door but do not receive a response, [m]ay the officers enter the home? His answer: Of course.

Some may ignore Kavanaughs concurrence, allowing it to represent yet another example of why the late Justice Antonin Scalia waxed poetic about the utter freedom when one writes lone dissents. But this is not a dissent; it is a concurrence. Its analysis is no mere dicta; rather, it may better be characterized as dicta dentata, i.e., dicta with teeth, given what Caniglias unanimity and the drumbeat of the concurrences augur.

Wait: Did it suddenly get chilly in here? Someone must have just opened an Overton Window.

Read more here:
In unanimous Fourth Amendment ruling, a reminder that there is, in fact, no place like home - SCOTUSblog

BEFORE the 20th century there were few cases involving the 4th Amendment as the Bill of Rights did not initially apply to state or local governments.

That changed in 1961 after the Mapp v. Ohiodecision allowing more cases to be brought forward.

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The 4th Amendment 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."

In layman's terms, it prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and sets requirements for issuingwarrants.

If there is no probable cause and you are illegally searched, any evidence collected from the search will be excluded from evidence at trial.

It ultimately acts to protect people's right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable intrusions by the government.

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4th Amendment case law revolves around three main issues:

The amendment was established in response to the abuse of thewrit of assistance - a type of generalsearch warrantissued by theBritish government - which a major point of contention between Americans and the British.

It was introduced in Congress in 1789 by James Madison and was ratified on December 15, 1791.

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There are 27 amendments in the United States constitution.

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On May 17, 2021, the Supreme Court sided with a Rhode Island man who said police illegally seized firearms from his home without a warrant.

The Supreme Court decision reversed a lower court decision that law enforcement was allowed to enter the man's home and seize his firearms without a warrant after his wife expressed fear that he might harm himself.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the unanimous decision citing the 4th Amendment, "The very core of the Fourth Amendment" is the "right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable search and seizure."

See the original post:
What is The 4th Amendment?... - The Sun

Last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a redacted version of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinion and order following a declassification review. The opinion, which was originally entered in November 2020, reflects the findings and conclusions reached by the FISC after reviewing the 2020 certifications presented by the attorney general and the director of national intelligence (DNI) seeking authority to conduct electronic surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The courts decision was widely chided in the media for, once again, approving a Section 702 certification in the face of widespread violations."

The Nov. 18, 2020, decision entered by FISC Presiding Judge James Boasberg followed earlier orders from Boasberg, entered in December 2019 and in October 2018, that also addressed government certifications seeking approval to conduct surveillance under the authority of FISA Section 702 (50 U.S.C. 1881a). In each instance, redacted versions of Boasbergs opinions were released publicly after classification reviews by the ODNI. Boasbergs redacted October 2018 opinion was released nearly a year later, in October 2019; his redacted December 2019 opinion was released by the ODNI in September 2020; and his redacted November 2020 opinion was released in April 2021.

Coincidentally, the ODNI released this most recent redacted FISC decision addressing Section 702 during the same week that the American Civil Liberties Union and others filed a petition asking that the Supreme Court find a qualified First Amendment right of access requiring that all FISC decisions be released and redacted only as necessary to prevent genuine harm to national security. In pursuing relief from the Supreme Court, those petitioners seek to overturn a carefully calibrated process regarding the workings of the FISC designed to provide reasonable transparency into that courts decisions while protecting classified information relating to intelligence sources and methods. In the case of FISA Section 702, those processes are meant to protect the unique sources and methods associated with what has been described as the most potent power Congress has granted U.S. spy agencies to gather intelligence on everything from terrorism to nuclear proliferation to foreign adversaries plans and intentions.

Each of the redacted Boasberg opinions from 2018 through 2020 addresses the corresponding years government certification seeking reauthorization of the collection authority provided by FISA Section 702. The certifications are presented annually to the FISC along with the statutorily required targeting, minimization and querying procedures used by the U.S. intelligence community in connection with its employment of the surveillance authorized by the courts approval of each certification. Substantively, in terms of the categories of foreign intelligence information sought by the government, the certifications have not changed materially since Section 702 was first enacted as part of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

The redacted Boasberg opinions are lengthy, and the discussions in each opinion recount multiple incidents of noncompliance in connection with the execution of the Section 702 program. These incidents are notable with respect to the application of the minimization and querying procedures employed in executing the program (explained below and here), and most particularly with the actions of the FBI in querying the Section 702 database of unminimized communications. Ultimately, however, the FISC approved each of the Section 702 certifications submitted by the government in 2018, 2019 and 2020, although the 2018 certification and procedures were approved only after Boasberg concluded that the FBIs minimization and querying procedures, as first submitted and employed by the FBI, did not comply with the Fourth Amendment. The government appealed Boasbergs initial ruling but, after the FISA Court of Review upheld the FISCs decision, the FBI modified its procedures as needed to secure the FISCs approval.

Media discussion of these FISC opinions has focused on those compliance issues with headlines declaring, FBI and NSA violated surveillance law or privacy rules, a federal judge found and Federal court approved FBIs continued use of warrantless surveillance power despite repeated violations of privacy rules.

Critics were incensed at the FISCs approval of the 2018 certification, pointing to the record of noncompliance reflected in the FISCs opinions to argue that at no point in Section 702s existence has the government operated the program in full compliance with constitutional requirements. When a December 2019 opinion by Boasberg was released in redacted form in September 2020 reflecting the FISCs approval of the governments requested 2019 reauthorization of Section 702 surveillance even as it revealed further incidents of noncompliance, exasperated opponents wondered aloud, [W]hat would it take for the FISA court to say no? Others described the FISCs actions as compliance whack-a-mole while insisting that the frequency of the transgressions depicts systemic noncompliance that makes the entire program untenable.

Is the FISC failing its responsibilities with respect to the function it performs in the Section 702 program? Given the role the FISC is intended to play with respect to its oversight of the Section 702 program, the answer is no.

A Brief Primer on How Section 702 Works

Prior to the enactment of Section 702 as part of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, the type of surveillance now authorized by Section 702 required that the government show on an individualized basis, with respect to all non-U.S. person targets located overseas, the existence of probable cause to believe that the target was a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. In effect, the intelligence community treated non-U.S. persons located overseas like U.S. persons, even though foreigners outside the United States are not entitled to the protections of the Fourth Amendment. Coupled with the seismic change in the technological environment occurring since FISAs 1978 passage, the application of the traditional FISA framework to targeting non-U.S. persons located outside the United States posed significant challenges to the timely collection of intelligence critical to the nations security.

The attorney general and the DNI authorize targeting under Section 702 in a manner substantially different from traditional electronic surveillance under FISA. Under Section 702, instead of issuing individual court orders, the FISC approves an annual certification submitted by the attorney general and the DNI that identifies categories of foreign intelligence targets. Targeting, however, is constrained by specific limitations included by Congress that prohibit targeting anyone known to be in the United States; prohibit targeting any U.S. person located outside the United States; prohibit targeting someone outside the United States for the purpose of targeting a particular, known person in this country; prohibit the intentional acquisition of any communication where all participants are located in the United States at the time of the acquisition; prohibit the acquisition of communications that refer to, but are neither to nor from an authorized target; and require that all Section 702 acquisitions be consistent with the Fourth Amendment.

To implement these statutory restrictions and protections, Section 702 requires the use of targeting procedures, minimization procedures, querying procedures and acquisition guidelines. The targeting procedures are designed to ensure that an acquisition targets only foreigners outside the United States and that it complies with the prohibition on acquiring wholly domestic communications. The minimization procedures protect the identities of U.S. persons and limit the dissemination of any nonpublic information concerning them that may be incidentally acquired. The acquisition guidelines seek to ensure compliance with all the statutory limitations described above. Finally, the querying procedures, added by Congress in reauthorizing Section 702 in 2018, regulate the manner by which the unminimized data collected under Section 702 may be searched to retrieve information.

Surveillance conducted under the authority of Section 702 is programmatic collection on a vast scale. A redacted FISC opinion from 2011 revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting more than 250 million internet communications each year pursuant to Section 702. Two years later, the ODNI began reporting the number of Section 702 targetsand registered 89,138 for calendar year 2013. While no publicly available information has charted the expansion of collection under Section 702, the growth in the number of targetsto 204,968 in 2019might reasonably be expected to correspond to a proportional growth in collection. The intelligence community transparency report for 2020, released just last month, showed a small decline in the number of Section 702 targetsdisclosing 202,723 targets in 2020. It is the first decline in the number of Section 702 targets since the ODNI began disclosing Section 702 target numbers in 2013.

All of the required procedures used with Section 702 acquisitions have been mandated by Congress to address an inescapable feature of this type of collection: While Section 702 targets foreigners located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information, it is understood that the communications of U.S. persons communicating with any targeted foreigner may be incidentally collected as part of the surveillance directed against that foreign target.

The existence of this incidental collection has been acknowledged from Section 702s inception and is the bte noire of its critics. Following the Edward Snowden disclosures in 2013, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) conducted an extensive review of the Section 702 program, and its description of Section 702 acknowledged that communications of U.S. persons may be acquired in a variety of ways. The PCLOB report described Section 702 as a technologically complex collection program where incidents of noncompliance have been identified but no intentional attempts to circumvent or violate the procedures or statutory requirements. Commenting further, the PCLOB observed that many of these incidents have involved technical issues resulting from the complexity of the program, and the Board has not seen any evidence of bad faith or misconduct. Since the issuance of that PCLOB report in July 2014, none of the FISCs annual reviews of the governments 702 certifications has identified any intentional effort to circumvent or violate the statutorily mandated procedures regulating its operation.

While there is no documented evidence of any intentional evasion of the procedures or statutory requirements governing the collection or use of information obtained by Section 702 surveillance, every available FISC opinion addressing the courts review of the Section 702 program has documented incidents of noncompliance. In some instances, the noncompliance incidents have been numerically significant and, at times, represented recurring violations. However, it is also true, as the PCLOB noted, that calculating the compliance incident rate for the Section 702 program, as the government did, by dividing the number of identified compliance incidents by the average number of selectors on task produced an incident rate substantially below 1 percent at the time the PCLOB report was issued in 2014. Whether the compliance rate using those metrics remains in that range today is not publicly available information.

Notably, the FISC obtains its information regarding incidents of noncompliance from the agencies that operate the Section 702 program. Self-disclosure of noncompliance is mandatory: Section 702(m) requires the attorney general and the DNI to assess compliance with the targeting, minimization and querying procedures approved by the FISC every six months, and to provide the FISC with this assessment. Self-reporting is also required, for example, by the NSAs minimization procedures, and the FISCs own rules of procedure mandate disclosure whenever any authority or approval by the court is implemented in a manner that does not comply with the courts authorization or with applicable law. According to the ODNI, every identified incident of non-compliance, regardless of the U.S. person status of individuals affected by the incident, is reported to the FISC (through notices or in reports) and to Congress in semiannual reports.

The Role of the FISC With Section 702

Given this standard of mandatory self-reporting, what is the role of the FISC as it considers the governments annual certification and accompanying procedures seeking reauthorization of Section 702 authority even as the FISC is aware of existing noncompliance in the program? The disclosure and oversight regimen described above reflects the coordinated approach the FISC takes in addressing FISA submissions received from the government. Generally, the FISCs rules require that the government begin with a proposed submission, which the court will review and, where necessary, raise any potential issues directly with the government. Only after this dialogue has occurred will the government submit, and the court consider, a final submission.

While this coordinated approach is established via the FISCs own rules of procedure for FISA Title I surveillance, Congress has directly mandated a similar process with respect to the governments requests for surveillance authority under Section 702. Congress established a specific Schedule in Section 702 requiring: (1) that the government submit any requested reauthorization of Section 702 surveillance authority at least 30 days prior to the expiration date of the existing authorization, and (2) that the FISC review a certification and its accompanying targeting, minimization, and querying procedures within 30 days of submission, and then issue an order under paragraph (3)[,] that is, Section 702(j)(3)).

The FISC review contemplated by Section 702 includes consideration of both the certification, for compliance with FISAs statutory requirements, and the accompanying targeting, minimization and querying procedures for consistency with the Fourth Amendment. This latter mandate is not found in FISAs Title I because of the materially different nature of the surveillance authority presented for the FISCs review. Title I applications seek orders based on individualized determinations of probable cause. Even with Title I applications, however, FISAs language suggests an approach that is arguably designed to provide the government with the requested surveillance authority whenever the court can satisfy itself that statutory and constitutional standards have been met. Thus, Section 105 in FISA Title I reads that, upon receipt of a FISA application, the FISC shall enter an ex parte order as requested or as modified approving the electronic surveillance. Certainly, no order would, or should, be entered, for example, if the government cannot establish probable cause, but the language chosen by Congress clearly expresses that, with respect to the nations critical foreign intelligence electronic surveillance capabilities, the FISC should give broad consideration to granting the governments applications for surveillance authority when it can do so consistently with its statutory and constitutional responsibilities.

The accommodation of the governments surveillance requests suggested by FISAs Title I statutory text is more pronounced with respect to the role Congress delineated for the FISCs consideration of certifications submitted under Section 702. Congress deliberately eschewed a thumbs up or thumbs down review process, directing instead that the FISCs review culminate in the issuance of an order. Significantly, the only statutory alternatives available to the FISC with respect to entering orders related to its review of Section 702 certifications are Approval or Correction of Deficiencies. FISA does not contemplate an outright denial of a government certification seeking Section 702 surveillance authority; instead, the statute requires that the FISC offer the government the election to correct any deficiency identified by the FISC, or cease or not begin, the implementation of the authorization for which such certification was submitted.

The Boasberg Opinions Approving Section 702 Certifications (2018-2020)

When viewed in the context of the statutory construct of FISA, the redacted and recently released version of Boasbergs November 2020 opinion addressing the governments 2020 Section 702 certification and procedures takes precisely the form FISA contemplates. Even as it offers pointed criticism in addressing the seemingly perpetual compliance failures of the FBI with respect to its querying practices, the FISC concludes that the reporting requirements and other corrective measures it has required as part of its approval of previous Section 702 submissions are adequate to conclude that the proposed procedures, as reasonably expected to be implemented, comply with the applicable statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.

Opponents of Section 702 are aghast at the FISCs repeated willingness to accept corrective measures proposed by the government that seem to continually fall short of fully remedying the repeated compliance violations discussed in Boasbergs opinions of October 2018, December 2019 and November 2020. They openly speculate as to the level of noncompliance the FISC would need to see to deny a certification package and bring Section 702 collection to a halt. In fact, the statutory regimen created by Congress in Section 702 does not provide the FISC with the authority to unilaterally terminate critical government surveillance efforts.

This makes perfect sense judged in the context of the Fourth Amendment analysis used to assess the governments Section 702 surveillance requests. The test the FISC properly applies is one of reasonablenessthe touchstone of the Fourth Amendmentwhich is evaluated using a totality of the circumstances standard in which the court balances the competing interests at stake.

That balancing necessarily begins with recognizing that government noncompliance with the myriad rules and procedures governing the operation of the Section 702 program does not, in and of itself, render the program unreasonable and, it logically follows, does not render it constitutionally suspect. Simply put, noncompliance does not equate to unconstitutional. The government interest at stake in this balancing is the nations security. Numerous courts have confirmed repeatedly that national security is at the apex of governmental interests, and the higher the government interest, the greater the intrusion that may be constitutionally tolerated. The countervailing interest is the desire of a U.S. person to communicate freely with foreigners located outside the United States without any prospect of those communications being collected by government surveillance despite that foreigner being a target of foreign intelligence interest to the government. Where the Fourth Amendment reasonableness balance should be struck in this setting produces the entirely supportable conclusion that the incidental collection of U.S. person communications acquired while targeting foreigners located outside the U.S. pursuant to an approved Section 702 certification does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Perhaps it is the futility of this Fourth Amendment argument, which essentially challenges the constitutionality of Section 702 on its face and has been repeatedly rejected by the courts, that more recently has led opponents, and amici counsel arguing in the FISC, to pursue a different approach. This alternative argument contends that even if the initial incidental acquisition of U.S. person communications using Section 702 authority is constitutional, the subsequent querying of the database containing those unminimized Section 702 communications using a U.S. person query term constitutes a new backdoor search that must be separately supported by probable cause. This contention receives its broadest analysis in the 2018 Boasberg opinion where, admittedly, the record before the FISC tempted such an argument because the FBI seems incapable of executing, in practice, querying procedures that Boasberg concluded were constitutionally sufficient as written.

The amici curiae appointed by the court focused on Congresss requirement in the 2018 FISA Reauthorization Act that the government adopt querying procedures governing access to the Section 702 database and that the FBI, in certain circumstances, acquire a FISC order before querying that database. These changes, they argued, reflected a congressional recognition that FBI queries of the Section 702 database represented new searches requiring separate Fourth Amendment analysis. They also insisted that the Supreme Courts 2018 decision in Carpenter v. U.S. represented a recognition that modern technologies, like the cell site location information at issue in Carpenter, warranted a redefining of Fourth Amendment protections and that querying a database collected using the governments Section 702 surveillance authority should receive such protection.

Boasberg declined to find that querying the unminimized Section 702 database represents an additional search. In his view, Congress created statutory, not constitutionally mandated, protections with its addition of the querying requirements included in the 2018 FISA Reauthorization Act. He also resisted the invitation to extend the Carpenter ruling to the querying of unminimized Section 702 data, perhaps recalling the Supreme Courts own insistence that its Carpenter decision was intended as a narrow one that specifically did not consider other collection techniques involving foreign affairs or national security. Indeed, examined logically, the later querying of data that has been lawfully collected by targeting a foreigner located outside the U.S. pursuant to a FISC-approved Section 702 certification seems to more closely resemble the querying of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database using a lawfully obtained DNA sample, a practice approved by the Supreme Court in Maryland v. King. As in King, a subsequent query of the unminimized Section 702 database searches a repository of information already lawfully in the governments possession by virtue of having been collected pursuant to a FISC-approved Section 702 certification that complies with the Fourth Amendment.

Conclusion

The public debate over the Section 702 collection program and, specifically, the question of the governments right to access the communications of U.S. persons incidentally acquired while communicating with foreign Section 702 targets will unquestionably continue if for no reason other than the FBI will almost certainly generate new issues of compliance related to its querying practices. That debate will sharpen each time a new FISC opinion related to its oversight of Section 702 is released in redacted form, and there will be many who will excoriate the FISC for refusing to say no to a history of government noncompliance.

No, however, is not among the statutory options that FISA provides to the FISC. Congress recognizes the critical role that authorities like the Section 702 surveillance program play in protecting the nations security: producing intelligence product that the House Intelligence Committee has described as unique, unavailable from any other source, and regularly provid[ing] critically important insights and operationally actionable intelligence on terrorists and foreign intelligence targets around the world. FISA includes the congressional mandate that the Section 702 program be conducted consistently with the Fourth Amendment. In carefully balancing the nations security with its cherished constitutional principles, Congress has fashioned a role for the FISC that calls for oversight, review and correctionrather than terminationwhen surveillance practices encroach on those constitutional precepts. Viewed from this perspective, the Boasberg opinions of 2018, 2019 and 2020 addressed, and resolved, the compliance issues presented with each of the governments annual Section 702 submissions precisely as FISA requires.

See the original post here:
To Oversee or to Overrule: What is the Role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Under FISA Section 702? - Lawfare

Edward v. Vannoy is a fascinating case. It reveals raw fractures on the Court between Justice Kagan and Justice Kavanaugh, and I would add Chief Justice Roberts. However, perhaps the most tiring aspect of the case is the caterwauling about stare decisis. At this point, Justice Kagan needs to prepare a macro. Her copy-and-paste dissents about precedent are repetitive. She has made her point, and can only repeat it over and over again.

Still, I thought Justice Gorsuch had a poignant response. Last year, I joked that stare decisis is an old Latin phrase that means "Let the decisions of the Warren Court stand." Gorsuch seems to agree. He wrote:

The dissent criticizes today's decision as a departure from modern habeas precedent. Post, at 2; post, at 3, n. 2; post, at 1213. But the dissent's history is selective. The dissent champions decisions from the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. But it disregards how those decisions departed from a century of this Court's precedents and the common law before that. Supra, at 58. At the same time, the dissent's account overlooks this Court's precedents refusing to afford retroactive application in every case since the 1980s. Post, at 1011; post, at 12, n. 7. The dissent may prefer decisions within a particular 30-year window. But it is too much to say this preference is required to "[r]espect[] stare decisis." Post, at 1, n. 1.

Justice Kagan and her colleagues are keen to extoll the precedents established by the Warren Court. But left unsaid is how those decisions had zero respect for precedent.

Randy and I have added a chapter on Criminal Procedure for the 4th Edition of our casebook. In the process, I re-read many of the leading Warren Court CrimPro decisions. And I approached these cases from the perspective of constitutional law, rather than the nuances of law enforcement. I was struck, over and over again, at how willy-nilly the Warren Court nullified precedents. There were no discussions of reliance interests. In some cases, cases were overruled in footnotes, almost as an afterthought. Consider a few examples.

Mapp v. OhiooverruledWolf v. Colorado. In that case, the defendant did not ask the Court to overrule the case, but an amici did! Today, amici are invited to defend precedents. But in the 1960s, amici were invited to attack precedents. The Court explained the posture in a footnote.

Other issues have been raised on this appeal but, in the view we have taken of the case, they need not be decided. Although appellant chose to urge what may have appeared to be the surer ground for favorable disposition and did not insist that Wolf be overruled, the amicus curiae, who was also permitted to participate in the oral argument, did urge the Court to overrule Wolf.

Justice Harlan's dissent lamented this lack of "judicial restraint"

In overruling the Wolf case the Court, in my opinion, has forgotten the sense of judicial restraint which, with due regard for stare decisis, is one element that should enter into deciding whether a past decision of this Court should be overruled

The legend of Gideon v. Wainright is well known. The Court appointed Abe Fortas to represent the famous prisoner. And the Court "requested both sides to discuss in their briefs and oral arguments the following: 'Should this Court's holding in Betts v. Brady be reconsidered?'" Again, the Court was chomping at the bit to overrule a longstanding precedent.

Miranda v. Arizona overruled two precedents in Footnote 48. There was no discussion of stare decisis:

In accordance with our holdings today and in Escobedo v. Illinois, Crooker v. California (1958) and Cicenia v. Lagay (1958), are not to be followed.

Katz v. United Statesfamously overruledOlmestead v. United States. Katz found that the "underpinnings" of Olmstead "have been so eroded by our subsequent decisions that the 'trespass' doctrine there enunciated can no longer be regarded as controlling." The word stare decisis does not appear in the decision.

Justice Black regretted this decision in dissent:

It is the Court's opinions in this case andBergerwhich, for the first time since 1791, when the Fourth Amendment was adopted, have declared that eavesdropping is subject to Fourth Amendment restrictions and that conversations can be "seized."* I must align myself with all those judges who up to this year have never been able to impute such a meaning to the words of the Amendment.

And so on.

Why should the decisions of the Warren Court get stare decisis value, when the Warren Court gave so little deference to earlier, long-standing cases? Justice Kagan's preference to stare decisis should extend to cases that Justice Brennan did not join.

One final note onVannoy. Justice Kagan uses the word pre-butting:

On the last page or so of its merits discussion (before it turns to pre-butting this dissent), the majority eliminates the watershed exception, declaring it "long past time" to do so.

I checked. First time the word appears in any federal case. I love it.

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Let's talk about stare decisis on the Warren Court - Reason

In July 2016, Cleveland police officers stopped a 20-year-old Black man namedShase Howse. According to Howse, police slammed him to the ground, struck him twice in the back of his neck while he was trying to enter his own home, and took him to jail. Howse subsequently sued the police officers for using excessive force. But because of a judicially created doctrine called qualified immunity, the officers were not held accountable. In all too many cases like these, justice could have been served, if it were not for qualified immunity.

In 1967, the Supreme Courtcreatedfrom whole cloth the legal doctrine ofqualified immunity, and it has repeatedly expanded the defense ever since. As the doctrine currently exists, government officials, including police officers, cannot be held personally liable for their official misconduct unless they have violated a constitutional right that was clearly established at the time of the violation. In practice, this has become very difficult because plaintiffs are practically always required to identify prior case law involving nearly identical fact patterns. Even in cases in which the defendants actions were obviously unconstitutional, the plaintiff is often denied relief and the government official escapes accountability.

Unfortunately, thats exactly what happened in Howses case. In 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit refused to consider whether the police violated Howses rights and held that the police officers were entitled to qualified immunity because there was no prior case exactly like Howses. And earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Courtdeclinedto review this case, thereby letting the Sixth Circuits decision stand. This pattern repeats itself again and again, enabling the cycle of police violence to continue without accountability.

In March, the U.S. House of Representativespassedthe George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would eliminate qualified immunity as a defense for law enforcement officers, therefore allowing victims of the kind of police violence Howse and others have experienced to hold law enforcement officers accountable. While some argue that it's not fair to hold police officers liable if they didnt know that they violated the Constitution, in many cases, this concern is irrelevant because indemnification arrangements processes of compensating for injuries practically always shift financial liability away from those individual officers to their employers. Furthermore, constitutional doctrines that govern the use of force already give police leeway to make reasonable mistakes. Qualified immunity, however, shields officers from suit even when they trample on constitutional rights.

Even still, the Justice in Policing Act does not go far enough. While there are countless qualified immunity cases dealing with law enforcement officers, qualified immunity reaches further than the realm of policing. It applies to a wide variety of government action and has thwarted justice for constitutional violations that take place in schools, child protective contexts, state prisons, and more.

For example, an Arizona school nurse and administrative assistantsubjecteda 13-year-old girl to a strip search of her bra and underpants because they believed she had pain relief pills. This was an apparent violation of the girls Fourth Amendment rights; the girls mother sued, arguing school officials had no reason to believe the girl was hiding a pain reliever in her underpants. The Supreme Court held that the school officials could not be held accountable in a court of law for their misconduct because of the impossibly high threshold created by the Supreme Courts qualified immunity doctrine.

In another case, the Second Circuitgrantedqualified immunity to prison officials who had kept a pretrial detainee in solitary confinement for more than a year simply because the detainee asked a question about commissary access. While the Second Circuit held that the prison officials had violated the Constitution, the court granted qualified immunity, even though as the dissent observed, the prison officials actions were no different from loading [him] with chains and shackles and throwing him in a dungeon. Once again, because there wasnt a case with a similar enough fact pattern, justice was not delivered.

Qualified immunity cases like these, which do not involve police officers, are not covered by the Justice in Policing Act. Given that, several members of Congress led by Sen. Ed MarkeyEd MarkeyQualified immunity must be ended across the board Democrats ask Facebook to abandon 'Instagram for kids' plans Ron Johnson calls cyber attacks an 'existential' threat following Colonial Pipeline shutdown MORE (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ayanna PressleyAyanna PressleyOcasio-Cortez leading effort to block arms sale to Israel Qualified immunity must be ended across the board Dems offer bill to help single-parent families get expanded child tax credit MORE (D-Mass.) have proposed theEnding Qualified Immunity Act, which would eliminate qualified immunity across the board, not just in the context of policing.

Congress should make clear thatallgovernment officials should be held accountable when they violate peoples constitutional rights. The doctrine of qualified immunity must be ended completely.

Elizabeth Wydrais president ofConstitutional Accountability Center, a public interest law firm and think tank dedicated to promoting the progressive promise of the Constitutions text and history. She previously served as clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Follow her on Twitter@ElizabethWydra.

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Qualified immunity must be ended across the board | TheHill - The Hill

What to Know Today

North Carolina prosecutor says shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. was justified.Theverdictfrom Pasquotank County District Attorney Andrew Womble offered a starkly different picture of the April 21 incident than Browns family, whose lawyers have called the shooting an execution. Brown was killed while in his car after officers served him a search warrant. Womble released a portion of bodycam footage on Tuesday while saying officers were justified in using fatal force because Browns vehicle posed a deadly threat. The footage shows a chaotic scene in which Browns car is backing up as armed officers swarm him, and then driving away as they fire upon him. The family and the North Carolina attorney generalcalledon a state court to release all bodycam footage, not just the portion of relatively low-quality video released Tuesday, which did not necessarily line up with eyewitness reports. During his press conference, Wombleaddedthat deputies on the scene knew that Brown was not known to carry weapons and was unarmed during the fatal encounter. To say this shooting was justified, despite the known facts, is both an insult and a slap in the face to Andrews family, the Elizabeth City community and to rational people everywhere,reada statement from Browns family counsel.

With gun violence testing his agenda, Larry Krasner easily wins primary fight.The progressive prosecutor, who worked to dismantle the tough-on-crime policies of his predecessors, faced fierce blowback among police unions and their allies. Opposing forces seized on the citys elevated rates of gun violence homicides were up40 percentlast year and threw their weight behind former city prosecutor Carlos Vega. But Krasnereasilyheld off by Vega by more than 40,000 votes. Related:Though Krasner won, his reform agenda is facing a number of headwinds as my colleague J. Brian Charlesreportedlast week.

Dissident NRA board member is fundraising to appeal the bankruptcy ruling.Phillip Journey, a Kansas judge who previously spearheaded an effort to get an independent examiner appointed during the groups bankruptcy proceedings, is trying to raise $100,000 to launch an appeal to a Texass judges decision last week to dismiss the bankruptcy push as lacking good faith. While Journey testified against NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre during the hearings, he is also wary of the New York attorney generals ongoing attempt to dissolve the organization entirely. So, asThe Reload reports, Journey is hoping to keep the bankruptcy alive, have a trustee take over NRA operations, and have a committee of NRA members chart the organizations reorganization. Board members Owen Buz Mills and Rocky Marshall are supporting Journey.ICYMI:In ourmost recent weekly newsletter, Will Van Sant previewed the road ahead for the NRA after its court loss. Among other things, experts told him a bankruptcy appeal was a long shot. (You can sign up for The Weeklyhere.)

Supreme Court unanimously rules against warrantless gun seizure for man being evaluated for suicide.The high courtruledthat police violated the Fourth Amendments prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure when taking a Rhode Island mans guns from his home after he agreed to go to the hospital following a dispute with his wife. The court said exceptions to the Fourth Amendment that previously allowed a warrantless search of vehicles or other public settings do not apply to the home.

Man charged over Capitol insurrection under house arrest for firearms violations.Patrick Montgomery, a Colorado resident, was indicted in federal court on several counts, including assaulting a police officer on January 6. But after learning of a March incident in which Montgomery shot and killed a mountain lion with a handgun, prosecutorssayhe violated theterms of his pretrial release, which included a restriction on possessing guns.

$25 million the funding earmarked for an Office of Violence Prevention in Austin, Texas, last summer that is supposed to go toward community violence intervention programs. With the city facing still-elevated gun violence this year, a city council member is attempting to expedite the launch. [Austin American-Statesman]

Originally posted here:
Daily Bulletin: No Charges for Officers Who Killed Andrew Brown Jr. - The Trace

Last week I posted about a new podcast series I've started running. Now there is another.

Professor Dan Epps and I have just launched a new podcast on the Supreme Court, called Divided Argument. We describe it as "an unscheduled, unpredictable Supreme Court podcast." We won't make any promises to keep to a weekly schedule or cover every round of Supreme Court arguments or decisions, but we'll drop new episodes when we feel like we have something to say, and I suspect we'll have plenty to say over the next few weeks. And hopefully you'll find that we don't adhere to any particular party line.

I realize that not everybody likes to spend time listening to podcasts, which I understand. (Actually, I don't completely, but maybe they spend less time running errands or doing housework than I do.) But it gives me a different format for talking through lots of things about the Supreme Court.

Our first two episodes are a two-part discussion of the Supreme Court's "shadow docket," something I wrote about eight years ago in an article that was in turn drawn from many reflections from blogging here, and which has been in the news a lot lately:

Episode 1, Normal Procedural Regularity

Episode 2, Woke To The Trend

Our third episode discusses yesterday's Supreme Court decisions, especially the important habeas opinions in Edwards v. Vannoy, as well as the Fourth Amendment decision in Caniglia v. Strom:

Episode 3, Grandma's House of Vice

I hope you enjoy, and feel free to leave feedback in the comments or send it along to pod@dividedargument.com.

Read more:
My New Divided Argument Podcast Reason.com - Reason

This article is part of the Policing and Technology Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the relationship between law enforcement, police reform, and technology.

Theres a man pacing back and forth in the grocery store parking lot, evidently agitated, shouting at the sky. Concerned, you ring 911. On the phone, a police dispatcher reassures you that someone is coming over to helpand so is a drone. Soon, you hear the telltale buzz of a drone overhead. Through its camera, someone is watching the agitated man in the parking lot, feeding information back to emergency services. They are also, intentionally or not, watching you, and everyone else who happens to wander into the drone cameras expansive field of view.

In the Southern California town of Chula Vista, drone flights like this fictional example happen dozens of times a day, launched to the scene almost every time someone calls 911. The Chula Vista Police Departments is the first of its kind, enabled by a special, sweeping 2018 regulatory waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Drones were sent out more than once to situations described as fake COVIDtesting.

Most everywhere else in the U.S., drone pilots must secure hard-to-get waivers to fly beyond visual line of sight or over people. But in 2018, the Chula Vista Police Department procured a special waiver connected to the Trump-era UAS, or Unmanned Aerial Systems, Integration Pilot Program run by the FAA, which aimed to evaluate how drones can become more involved in American life. That waiver permitted the department to create its Drone as First Responder program, which allows police to fly over the entire city using small multirotor drones that are launched and piloted largely from central headquarters. By August 2019, the CVPD was permitted to use drones over 33 percent of the citys area, and in March 2021, the FAA approved an expansion of the CVPDs range to cover the entirety of the city. Now, when a call comes in to 911, the dispatcher decides whether to send a drone. The answer is usually yes, in which case the drone launches from the department HQ and flies to the scene of the incident at an altitude of about 300 to 400 feet. All along the way, it records video through a zoom camera lens, streaming footage back to HQ and to responding officers mobile devices. The footage is stored in Chula Vistas evidence.com data repository, where detectives and police can access it, as well as the district attorneys office. (The department has denied public access to the footage, claiming an exception under the California Public Records Act, but an April lawsuit filed by a San Diego newspaper is challenging this claim). According to the police force, as of March, the drones have flown more than 5,400 missions and played a role in more than 650 arrests.

But what, exactly, are those drones looking at during all these flights? In a laudable act of transparency, the Chula Vista Police Department posts detailed records online of where their drones flyand why. The data offers a poignant snapshot of the human experience, captured through the filters of 911 calls and the blinking red lens of a police drones camera. Many of the flights involve clearly dangerous scenarios: weapon threats, assaults, fires. Others are less so: a person sleeping on the sidewalk, a water leak, a report of someone drunk in public. Some are downright weird: Drones were sent out more than once to situations described as fake COVID testing.

Then, there are tragedies. Chula Vistas drones fly regularly when police conduct welfare checks and respond to reports of domestic violence. Drones fly to the scenes of child endangerment incidents and attempted suicides, and overdoses, and to scenarios described as person down or subject lying on the sidewalk, unknown if breathing/conscious. In February, the drone flew to investigate reports of a body near a taco shop. Some calls are ambiguous, leaving open room to speculate about what they might mean: suspicious circumstances, suspicious person, unknown problem, and subjects causing disturbance Finally, theres a constant drumbeat of mental subject flights and related terms: a woman walking down the freeway, a crazed person dancing in traffic, a naked transient.

Do all these very human scenarios really warrant surveillance from the sky? Im skeptical.

Chula Vistas willingness to use drones for anything and everything is a major departure from the way police have been talking about, and using, drones in the past few years. For a while, police have largely justified drones by pointing to efficiency and officer safety. These arguments and the media coverage that accompanies them tend to imply drones will be used mostly for extreme and dangerous scenarios.

In the wake of intense new scrutiny around police violence, policeChula Vista foremost among themare shifting to a new rationale for using drones: deescalation. They argue that sending a drone to the scene of an incident instead of an armed human being is a way for police to get a sense of whats going on from a detached and (if I may) Gods-eye-view perspective, reducing risk to both police and the public. Per a Chula Vista police spokesperson, 25 percent of the time the drone shows up before (human) police do, allowing them to use the drone imagery to assess whether a scenario is truly serious enough to warrant in-person response, giving everyone a moment to breath and take stock of the situation before armed officers appear on the scene. Its a compelling argument. But it fails to fully consider the downsides of a world where someone in crisis may see a drone coming to the scene before they see a person.

According to a Chula Vista spokesperson, the department works with the County of San Diego to send specially trained Psychiatric Emergency Response Team members to the scene when theyre called out to a mental health crisis, a system that can work in conjunction with the drones. The spokesperson also told me that to the best of their knowledge, the police havent encountered scenarios where the drone appeared to agitate or frighten someone. But the PERT team cant respond to every crisis.

You cant build a relationship through a buzzing blinking robot on your doorstep like you could with a person, says Eric Tars, the legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center. Then youve got the subset of the population with mental health crises that involve feelings of distrust for authority and paranoia. If youve got drones constantly buzzing overhead you dont have to be a conspiracy theorist to feel like the government is constantly watching you. Because they are.

While Chula Vistas police department says that it has done extensive community outreach around the drone program, Pedro Rios, a local resident and the director of the American Friends Service Committee U.S./Mexico Border Program, isnt convinced. From my experience, there doesnt seem to be enough public awareness and outreach to ensure that the public knows to what extent the drones are being used and for what purpose, and that they understand the safeguards that are in place so that the drone technology is actually used for proper law enforcement purposes and isnt susceptible to being abused or misused by anyone involved in the program, says Rios.

Rios has also written about how the Chula Vista police have a worrisome track record when it comes to securing the data they collect with other technologies. In early 2021, protesters demanded answers after it came to light that the departments automatic license-plate readers were sharing data with ICE and other federal agencies via the Vigilant Solutions network. While Chula Vistas police chief claimed that the data sharing was an accident, it doesnt inspire confidence in the departments ability to understand whats going on with its data.

In this, Chula Vista police have plenty of company, considering the sheer volume of reports of police across the country mishandling and misinterpretingintentionally or unintentionallythe sensitive data that they collect, often in close collaboration with private vendors. Adding huge quantities of drone data to the mix, collected multiple times a day, raises worrisome questions about U.S. police departments ability to truly understand who can access their data and for what purposes.

Perhaps the most big-picture frightening aspect of the Chula Vista drone program is that while its not quite an all-seeing system of persistent surveillance, its certainly getting there, as its always-recording drones crisscross the citys skies dozens of times a day, collecting data that police can then review at a later date. Its easy to imagine how the mere visual presence of the drone could create a major chilling effect on people in the community below, a psychological burden that will likely fall heaviest on more vulnerable people, like the unhoused, people with mental illnesses, and the considerable Southern California population of people who are undocumented or who have undocumented family.

For generations, the Fourth Amendment was not the biggest limit on surveillance, it was economics. Police had to be somewhat conservative with invasive surveillance tools because they were so expensive, says Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P) But as these tools get cheaper and cheaper, Fourth Amendment jurisprudence fails to keep up, and you end up with a cheap and affordable surveillance state where the tools that are being used are massively disproportionate to the harms theyre combating.

This cheapness has led the police down a very familiar 21st-century path of data overcollection, in which people and organizations reason that using surveillance tech to squirrel away vast quantities of dataeven if they dont need it right nowbeats not collecting it at all. According to police technology expert Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at American Universitys law school, its a case where police are of the mindset that more info is better, and that information will outweigh any sort of concerns the community might have. Theyre only looking at it from the frame of police and police need, and not from the larger frame of What are the impacts of having drones fly out for every 911 or 311 call?

In essence, Chula Vista is running a yearslong technological and social experiment, empowered by the federal government, on how drones intersect with policing and with people. From the point of view of the police, the program has been an enormous success, one that theyre eager to export to others across the country and across the world (so eager that the department has been accused of conflict-of-interest issues after former officers jumped ship to private drone companies). Sometimes it feels more than a little like police drone advocates are asking us to make a decidedly forced choice: a sky full of surveillance drones or more police shootings. You pick.

If we want to avoid living in a world of just-in-case police drone surveillance, then well have to make it less cheap and less easy for police to use them.

Some people, like Hamid Khan of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, believe that a complete ban on police drones is the best way forward: We dont really believe in regulating or creating policies because that continues to expand their use, he says, pointing out that at the time of their introduction, police helicopters and SWAT teams were also supposed to be rarely used measures reserved exclusively for extreme situationsa distinction that swiftly broke down.

Cahn also prefers an outright ban to half measures, but he suggests one alternate strategy might be mandating that drones can be used only if someone at the very top of the police organization signs off on the matter, along the lines of how wire taps are authorized. If its something where you have to bother the chief of police, then thats something thats more a check. Anything that increases the cost in dollar and cents or time is going to be helpful in limiting these abuses, he says.

Others suggest more reform-based measures, along the lines of the ACLUs Community Control Over Police Surveillance effort, which supports the creation of community-based review boards that give people a say in how police use technology. This might take the form, as Ferguson suggests, of giving members of the community the authority to review the data to decide if a situation merits a police response or not, giving them more control over who holds the information itself.

Drones may have legitimate uses in policing. But we shouldnt accept that the constant presence of surveillance technology, from drones to facial-recognition cameras to license plate readers, is the price that our communities must pay to avoid police violence. If police want to use drones more widely than they already are, then we should demand that they truly understand the risks that fly alongside them first.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

Go here to see the original:
The California City That Sends a Drone Almost Every Time Police Are Dispatched on a 911 Call - Slate