
Low-level federal judges balk at law enforcement asking for electronic evidence - wfjackson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/low-level-federal-judges-balking-at-law-enforcement-requests-for-electronic-evidence/2014/04/24/eec81748-c01b-11e3-b195-dd0c1174052c_story.html
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marincounty
Some of us really do take notice. Thank you Judge Facciola.

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HistoryInAction
Interesting that ECPA isn't explicitly mentioned in this article.

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themartorana
After watching a tractor trailer carrying an armored personnel carrier painted
with the name of a small-town police department rolling down the road just the
other day, I welcome just about every check against the unprecedented police
state in this country that has arisen over the past 15 years or so.

It's of constant frustration that the Founding Fathers didn't include the
actual word "privacy" anywhere in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, but I'm
one of the people that believe the Fourth Amendment basically covers and makes
illegal almost all mass collection and seizure of electronic data that the
Federal and local governments seem to believe is their right.

I may not be allowed reasonable assumptions of privacy when in a public space,
but I do believe my email (stored personally or by Google) and my phone calls
and text messages DO have a reasonable expectation of privacy around them, and
their collection by government agencies must be extremely tightly scoped, if
at all.

But that's just me, I suppose.

(Edit: missing word.)

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harshreality
The founders could envision quite a lot, but the sorts of privacy violations
we're concerned about today (video and audio surveillance, license plate
scanning, drones, archives of search histories and personal correspondence and
knowledge of personal interests) are beyond what they could have anticipated,
because technology. The kind of privacy they were concerned with was
government agents personally and physically intruding on private citizens'
personal lives. The federal government at that time was not in a position to
intrude very much on individuals' privacy, but even so we got the 3rd and 4th
amendments. The feds had minimal domestic scope, and there was relatively
little federal law enforcement. The founders anticipated some federal
government scope creep, but not this.

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alexqgb
Most people think of "reasonable expectation of privacy" as meaning "what can
I reasonably expect the police to respect given all they're technically
capable of?" Obviously, the boundaries of this interpretation are tightening
like a noose. But the standard can also be interpreted to mean _" what is a
reasonable level of privacy to expect in order for government of, by, and for
the people to operate?"_ Or as Abraham Lincoln would put it, to "not perish
from this Earth."

By this standard, an awful lot of what's done by the police and military is
wildly unreasonable. Indeed, the extraordinary threat to democracy posed by
their near-total lack of restraint is why their orgy of abuse has attracted
such shock and dismay. No reasonable person can expect this hyper-secretive,
massively financed, and totally contemptuous set of organizations to happily
coexist with legitimate democratic rule and the security of individual
liberty.

By that standard, the Founders clearly anticipated and specifically disallowed
what's now unfolding.

