Category Archives: Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment Warrant Requirements

By: Top Trusts Estate Law

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Fourth Amendment Warrant Requirements - Video

ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMSP) -

If a bipartisan group of legislators have their way, Minnesotans will vote on an electronic data privacy constitutional amendment in 2016.

The amendment would require law enforcement agencies to get a warrant if they want to look through your emails or other electronic communications. (Read the bill for yourselfhere.)

By contrast, the current practice, as described to Fox 9 by Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota ACLU, allows law enforcement to "take your cell phone, dump all your contents and picture and take all of it, and they can use it to build a case against you."

"But if they had Fourth Amendment protections, you would have the ability in some cases to block the government from downloading your data, and in other cases to ensure that the government does it properly," Samuelson adds.

One of the authors of the Senate version of the bill, Branden Petersen (R-Andover), says the reason he thinks a constitutional amendment is more appropriate in this case than simply passing a law has to do with the distinction between "guiding governing principles" and specific cases.

"Statutory-focused legislation is very specific in dealing with specific instances, and it's not open to interpretation in terms of what it means, whereas constitutional language is much more universal," Petersen says. "In the existing Fourth Amendment, you have the right [to be protected] from unreasonable searches and seizures of your effects in your home, but it doesn't say what 'effects' means in all its iterations. That's not how the constitution is written, and of course we interpret those principles in a whole host of different ways, as we've seen throughout our history."

Petersen argues it's time for the Fourth Amendment to be brought into the digital age.

"If we were all going to start Minnesota today and write the constitution, I think it's pretty clear that electronic data would be included," Petersen says. "And then, of course, all law flows downhill from the constitution, so if you're going to get it right in the first place, you should start with original governing principles and then create laws that are consistent with those principles. We don't start debating statute without a constitutional basis to do so, or at least we ought not do so."

"If the founders were here today, of course electronic data would be protected, because it tells every intimate detail of your life," Petersen adds.

See the rest here:
Bill aimed at strengthening electronic data privacy rights advances at Capitol

Since June 2013, the American public, press, and policy-makers have been debating the implications of Edward Snowdens disclosures of mass U.S. government surveillance programs, most established after the 9/11 attacks. Our reliance on modern communications technology and its connection with our basic constitutional rights of free speech and Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless seizures and searches is at the heart of that debate. But while that controversy has raged very publicly (even globally), another series of U.S. government search and seizure activities have only recently started to receive the scrutiny they deserve. And just as the over-reach by the NSA sparked what I have previously termed the digital resistance movement, these other searchesconducted by elements of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)have sparked a more traditional form of citizen resistance.

Enter the VIPR

Less than three years after the 9/11 attacks struck American commercial aviation carriers, Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists targeted a different kind of transportation system Madrids commuter rail network. Just over a year after that attack, terrorists struck the London bus and subway system. Fearing U.S. transit systems would be next, DHS officials responded by creating Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams, composed of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Air Marshall (FAM) personnel, augmented by state or local law enforcement organizations. Touted as a means of deterring and preventing terrorism, the VIPR program has grown from a single team in 2004-05 to over 30-teams and an annual budget of over $100 million today. As the number and scope of VIPR operations have grown, so has the controversy surrounding their employment.

Warrantless searches and internal checkpoints are characteristics of totalitarian political systems.

While VIPR teams began as extensions of security at major airports, TSA officials gradually began pushing VIPR operations beyond airportsto major transit systems in Washington, Houston, Boston, New York City, and most recently, Chicago. Multiple published reports over the past several years have documented warrantless baggage searches by VIPR teams on these transit systems. TSA officials claim that the judicially-created special needs exception to the Fourth Amendment provides them with the legal authority to conduct such searches. In 2011, a VIPR teamtook overthe Amtrak station in Savannah, Georgia and conducted warrantless searches of detraining passengers. The same year in Tennessee, VIPR teams conducted warrantless searches of trucks atweigh stations.

Over the last decade, VIPR teams have conducted thousands of such searches (according to Congressional testimony by TSA officials) and uncovered no terrorists. Indeed, the November 2013 shooting at Los Angeles International Airport was a demonstration of how the alleged deterrent effect of random VIPR operations was no deterrent to a determined gunman. The same month, the Government Accountability Office published areport calling into question a key component of VIPR teamsBehavior Detection Officers and the validity of the operational concept underlying their use. The ACLU has declared the VIPR program a direct assault on the Fourth Amendment. In the 113thCongress, Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) tried tokill the VIPR programaltogether, regrettably without successbut it is very likely Garrett will make another attempt in 2015.

VIPR teams represent an expensive and ineffective counterterrorism tool whose tactics and practices are, in the view of privacy and civil liberties community, constitutionally abhorrent. However, VIPR is not the only DHS component engaged in attempted or actual warrantless searches of the travelling public.

Papers, please

Throughout the southwest United States and at selected points near the Canadian border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection operates a series of inland checkpoints on American highways, sometimes as much as 100 miles inside the United States. Most Americans who do not live in areas where the checkpoints are located are probably unaware that these inland CBP checkpoints have existed for decades, legitimized by an ill-considered Supreme Court decision inUnited States v. Martinez-Fuerte.

That case, which involved three separate incidents involving the transportation of illegal aliens into the United States, examined the question of whether the use of such checkpoints for warrantless seizures and visual inspection (read searches) violated the Fourth Amendment. Writing for the Courts majority, Justice Powell asserted that given the huge problem of illegal immigration and CBPs responsibility of to prevent it, under the circumstances of these checkpoint stops, which do not involve searches, the Government or public interest in making such stops outweighs the constitutionally protected interest of the private citizenIn summary, we hold that stops for brief questioning routinely conducted at permanent checkpoints are consistent with the Fourth Amendment and need not be authorized by warrant. The courts reasoning seemed to be thus: Abiding by the traditional probable cause standard was too burdensome to the effort to stem illegal immigration.

Read the rest here:
Homeland Insecurity: Checkpoints, Warrantless Searches and Security Theater

8. The Surveillance Society: GPS Tracking, U.S. v. Jones, and the Fourth Amendment

By: Utah Law

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8. The Surveillance Society: GPS Tracking, U.S. v. Jones, and the Fourth Amendment - Video

My friend and co-blogger Ilya Somin has blogged a few times about the originalist case for a right to same-sex marriage. Reviewing the arguments, he recently concluded: [I]t is no longer possible to claim that there is no serious originalist case for striking down laws banning same-sex marriage. I disagree. It is possible to claim that, and Ill even prove it by making the claim right now: As far as I can tell, there is no serious originalist case for a right to same-sex marriage. Or at least thats what I think so far, based on the arguments that Ilya has provided and linked to in his posts. Ill explain my current thinking here and invite others to show why I am wrong.

Lets start by reviewing the originalist arguments that Ilya has mentioned.

The Calabresi argument. In his essay posted on SSRN, Steven Calabresis primary originalist case for a right to same-sex marriage runs something like this. In U.S. history, it has been common for major political documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and many state constitutions, to say that all men are created free and equal. Concerns with freedom and equality generally undergirded legal reforms in the Reconstruction era, including the Reconstruction era constitutional amendments. Laws forbidding same-sex marriage violate principles of freedom and equality, and therefore they violate the Fourteenth Amendment, which of course was one of the Reconstruction-era constitutional amendments.

The Ramsey argument. Michael Ramsey has blogged a tentative originalist case for a right to same-sex marriage. It runs like this: If we assume that an originalist Equal Protection clause establishes an anti-discrimination or equal treatment rule that applies to choices as to who a person can marry, our modern understanding that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are based on discrimination and inequality can lead to the result that such laws violate the original understanding of the Equal Protection clause.

The Eskridge argument. As Ilya recently noted, William Eskridge has briefly blogged an originalist case, too. According to Eskridge, Justice Kennedys 1996 opinion in Romer v. Evans began by recognizing that an original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment was to bar caste or class legislation. Laws prohibiting same-sex marriage amount to case or class legislation, so they violate the originalist conception of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Somin argument. Finally, Ilya has blogged that he thinks laws prohibiting same-sex marriage amount to unconstitutional sex discrimination. In his latest post, he describes this as an originalist argument, linking to this 2013 post which in turn relied on this article by Steven Calabresi and Julia Rickert arguing that sex discrimination was included in that original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. With the benefit of modern understanding, we can now see that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage involve sex discrimination, so they are unconstitutional. (Calabresi briefly makes a version of this argument at the end of his recent essay, too.)

The structure of these four arguments appears similar. They each work in two basic steps: (A) assert that the Fourteenth Amendment adopts a broad principle, and then (B) argue that same-sex marriage laws violate that principle. The arguments differ slightly in the nature of the broad principle that they assert the Fourth Amendment recognizes. To Calabresi, the principle is freedom and equality; to Ramsey, its equal treatment in marriage choices; to Eskridge, its rejection of caste legislation; and to Somin, its rejection of sex discrimination.

These are important arguments, but heres where I am stuck: I dont yet see how these are distinctly originalist arguments. My primary problem is at step (A), the articulation of the broad principle. I am not an originalist theoretician, so maybe I am missing something. But I would think that for these arguments to be considered distinctly originalist arguments, at a minimum, the process by which we identify the broad principle that the Fourteenth Amendment adopts has to be based on specific constitutional text as it was understood by the public at the time of its enactment. From what I can tell, the originalist arguments made so far havent really done that. As a result, Im not sure there is anything distinctly originalist about these claims.

Consider Calabresis primary argument about same-sex marriage, which is the most thoroughly developed of the four. Calabresi reasons that important historical political documents talked about freedom and equality, and that these basic concepts were an important influence on the 14th Amendment. So far, that seems hard to dispute. The problem, it seems to me, is that important historical documents talk about a lot of broad principles. And the idea of a general principle having an influence isnt the same as directly adopting a particular conception of that principle. Given that, its not clear which of those broad principles made it into the Constitution. Presumably, not all of them did. To bridge the gap, and to show that the specific principle was adopted at the time, I think we need the originalist step of showing how the specific text was originally publicly understood as recognizing that identified principle.

Without that step, I fear that what are being described as originalist arguments may just be products of the Level of Generality Game with the word originalist tacked on. Most students of constitutional law will be familiar with the Level of Generality Game, as its a common way to argue for counterintuitive outcomes. The basic idea is that any legal rule can be understood as a specific application of a set of broad principles. If you need to argue that a particular practice is unconstitutional, but the text and/or history are against you, the standard move is to raise the level of generality. You say that the text is really a representation of one of the relevant principles, and you then pick a principle at whatever level of abstraction is needed to encompass the position you are advocating. If the text and/or history are really against you, you might need to raise the level of generality a lot, so that you get a super-vague principle like dont be unfair or do good things. But when you play the Level of Generality Game, you can usually get there somehow. If you can raise the level of generality high enough, you can often argue that any text stands for any position you like.

More:
Volokh Conspiracy: Is there an originalist case for a right to same-sex marriage?

Sniper #39;s Paradise - DM: Fourth Amendment - PS4
I dont always camp but when I do, I find the best pitch in the world. Grand Theft Auto V https://store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/#!/tid=CUSA00411_00.

By: TheHellraiser666

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Sniper's Paradise - DM: Fourth Amendment - PS4 - Video

First Person Team Deathmatch GTA V (Ep 2)
Gameplay from the Team Deathmatch job "Fourth Amendment" on GTA V (5) PS4. If you enjoyed the video like and subscribe for more GTA V gameplay.

By: Adam Campbell

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First Person Team Deathmatch GTA V (Ep 2) - Video

The Making Of The Twenty Fourth Amendment Part 11
Think. Create. Inspire. Relax. Become.

By: LPTrax

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The Making Of The Twenty Fourth Amendment Part 11 - Video

The Making Of The Twenty Fourth Amendment Part 7
Think. Create. Inspire. Relax. Become.

By: LPTrax

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The Making Of The Twenty Fourth Amendment Part 7 - Video

The Making Of The Twenty Fourth Amendment Part 5
Think. Create. Inspire. Relax. Become.

By: LPTrax

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The Making Of The Twenty Fourth Amendment Part 5 - Video