Free Republic

Police can use evidence seized during a traffic stop even if it turns out the officers initially pulled a car over based on a misunderstanding of the law, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The 8-1 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts said that such a stop does not violate the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches. The ruling came in a North Carolina case in which a police officer pulled over Nicholas Heien’s car because the right brake light was out, although the left one still worked. A consensual search led to the discovery of cocaine in the trunk. A...

The Springfield Police Department, along with the Clark County Sheriff’s Department and Ohio State Highway Patrol were in for a big surprise last night when members of a local “Cop Block” chapter turned up to warn drivers about the disturbing “sobriety” checkpoint that was set up. The Clark County OVI Task Force said that their sobriety checkpoint was a “no refusal” inspection of drivers, to “make sure no one’s out drinking and driving,” an officer with the Springfield Police told us. The checkpoint was conducted at State Route 40 and State Route 68 in Clark County and began at 8:00...

James Tully, of Candensis, does not own a car and walks to work through the search area. He has been stopped and questioned by authorities numerous times, eventually being forced to the ground at gunpoint. The man who has been stopped by police numerous times while walking to work through the manhunt search area has been overwhelmed by the public's response, according to his mother, Linda Waddington Tully. There have been offers of vehicles, a fundraiser, and lots of media attention. James Tully, 39, lives off Snow Hill Road in Canadensis, which has been a key area in the search...

James Tully of Canadensis, who has to walk to work in the heart of the Eric Frein search area, has been stopped by police more than 20 times, including an encounter Friday night when he says he was roughed by an officer. Police searching for Eric Frein have questioned James Tully so many times that he started carrying his driver’s license and work identification on a neck lanyard to prove his identity. But that wasn’t enough to keep him from being forced to the ground by gunpoint Friday on Route 447, and being held there, face down in the gravel,...

Don’t let that pre-Attorney General debacle go down the memory hole. As we count down Eric Holder’s greatest hits, the first image that comes to the mind of many Americans isn’t that of Brian Terry, or of Black Panthers outside polling places, but of a screaming child staring down the barrel of a rifle. On April 22, 2000, just before dawn, U.S federal agents executed a full-blown raid on the home of five year old Elian Gonzalez, seizing the child and setting in motion procedures to send Elian and his father back to Cuba. I was only a freshman in...

Yahoo executives said the federal government made them participate in a surveillance program and turn over key private client information — else face $250,000 per day in fines. The insider account of how and why Yahoo helped the feds expand their spy program came to light just this week, after a judge ordered some materials

The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies. Planning documents for ICREACH, as the search engine is called, cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration as key participants. ICREACH contains information on the...

U.S. law enforcement can force Microsoft Corp. to turn over emails it stores in Ireland, a judge ruled in a case that technology companies have rallied around as they pursue billions of dollars in data storage business abroad. […] The Redmond, Washington-based software company has said rulings forcing it to turn over emails threaten to rewrite the Constitution’s protections against illegal search and seizure and could damage U.S. foreign relations. Its arguments were joined by large technology companies, including Apple Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. …

<p>Flores Laboy and Bigley said that police photographed the teenager's genitals last month but wanted the additional photos for better comparison to their evidence. In order to make his penis erect, they planned to take him to a hospital and give him an injection, Bigley said.</p>

A few days ago, we asked a simple rhetorical question: "Are you targeted by the NSA?" The answer, sadly for those reading this, is very likely yes, as it was revealed that as part of the NSA's XKeyscore program "a computer network exploitation system, as described in an NSA presentation, devoted to gathering nearly everything a user does on the internet" all it takes for a user to be flagged by America's superspooks is to go to a website the NSA finds less than "patriotic" and that user becomes a fixture for the NSA's tracking algos. So assuming one is...

When David Riley, a 19-year-old member of San Diego's Lincoln Park gang, was arrested in August 2009 on suspicion of shooting at a rival gang member, it received little or no public notice. The same was true when Riley's first trial ended in a hung jury, and when he was convicted at a second trial of attempted murder and other charges, and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. But now Riley's name has assumed national legal prominence as one of two cases that led to Wednesday's U.S. Supreme Court decision that extended privacy rights to cellphones, a sweeping...

KILLEEN (May 14, 2014) Documents released Wednesday including search warrant affidavits and a lengthy evidence inventory provide details of both the drug raid that left one Killeen police officer dead and another injured and of the crime scene investigation that followed the deadly shooting. Police Detective Charles “Chuck” Dinwiddie, 47, and Officer Odis Denton, 37, were shot as they and other officers served the narcotics search warrant just after 5:30 a.m. Friday at 1104 Circle M Dr. Apt. 3 in Killeen. Dinwiddie died at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in the intensive care unit of Scott & White Hospital. Denton, who was...

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - A SWAT team raids a Kalamazoo family home looking for drugs, but turns up empty handed. It happened last Thursday at a house on Southworth Terrace. Two young children were home at the time. Their parents tell us, police made a mistake, and now they're left to cope with the trauma. The family tells Newschannel 3 the man police were looking for, was renting the home nearly a year before they moved in, and they're upset police didn't do their homework before busting through their door. "I thought it was somebody either trying to rob...

Milwaukee police who forced their way into a gun rights advocate's home without a warrant, took her for an emergency mental evaluation and seized her gun were justified under the circumstances and protected from her civil rights claims, a federal appeals court has ruled. "The intrusions upon Sutterfield's privacy were profound," Judge Ilana Rovner wrote for three-judge panel. "At the core of the privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment is the right to be let alone in one's home." But the court also found, that on the other hand, "There is no suggestion that (police) acted for any reason other...

This week’s Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on warrantless vehicle searches has motorists wondering when a cop will be rummaging through their car. The ruling now permits police to search a vehicle without a driver’s consent or a judge’s signature on a warrant. Local police professionals, however, say little will change as far as who is subjected to searches. They claim it all comes down to an officer having “probable cause,” as the high-court ruling states. What exactly is probable cause? What qualifies as means for an officer to search a vehicle? “There must be probable cause that there is evidence...

The NSA isn’t the only government agency raising concerns about electronic privacy. Local police departments are coming under similar scrutiny—not only for using spying technology, but for hiding their use from the public. At least 25 police departments now use what is known as “Stingray,” a briefcase-sized box that swallows up cell phone data within a mile radius. More than one in three large police departments are also using license-plate readers, which can record every plate—even on a four-lane highway—from vehicles going at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour. […] But the two technologies raise broader questions about...

America is known as “The Land of the Free,” but with the world’s highest prison population where more than 12-million arrests were made in 2012 alone, the statement’s accuracy is open to question. According to the Wall Street Journal, more than half of American men will be arrested at least once in their lifetime, and a 2011 study reported by TIME suggests that one out of three young adults will be arrested at least once by the time they turn 23. In an “arrest-first-ask-questions-later” system, innocent citizens routinely find themselves in front of a mug shot camera -- and as...

If you’re arrested, can police search through your cell phone without first obtaining a warrant? Unfortunately, the law regarding cell phones searches has been unclear especially in the rise of smart phones. The Supreme Court heard two cases today about whether the police need warrants to search detainee’s mobile phones. Both of these cases, Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie, involve suspects getting charged for additional crimes after the police found evidence on their cell phones after their arrest. The lower courts have been torn on the privacy issue. This case should have huge implications as 12 million...

New restrictions on police use of cell phone tracking technology has won backing from the Minnesota Senate. Senators voted Tuesday to require a special tracking warrant when a device is used to find a person's location by their cell phone or other electronic devices. The bill says law enforcement must show probable cause of a crime. People being tracked must eventually be notified that their information was collected.

The National Security Agency has searched the communications of American citizens without obtaining warrants, the administration's top intelligence official confirmed this week. James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, confirmed the practice in a letter to Congress Tuesday. He didn't say when or how often the searches took place. The NSA gathers the communications of ordinary Americans, but it had not been clear if those records had been searched. "Senior officials have sometimes suggested that government agencies do not deliberately read Americans' emails, monitor their online activity or listen to their phone calls without a warrant," Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and...