Free Republic

The Riverside County Sheriff's Office is investigating the circumstances that led to the arrest of a French Valley woman in the early hours of July 4. The arrest is the subject of a video containing profanity circulating online showing a deputy refusing to leave the woman's residence despite her requests. According to the video, a minor answered the door after the deputy rang the bell. Captions in the video say the minor closed the door after seeing the deputy, only for the deputy to open the door and let himself in. [snip] "Now that I'm inside your house, I own...

Many circuit courts have said that law enforcement can hold your property for as long as they want. D.C.’s high court decided last week that’s unconstitutional.The Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extends to the length of a seizure, a federal court ruled last week, significantly restricting how long law enforcement can retain private property after an arrest. "When the government seizes property incident to a lawful arrest, the Fourth Amendment requires that any continued possession of the property must be reasonable," wrote Judge Gregory Katsas of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in...

Police traffic stops have become a hot topic lately, with critics claiming that Chicago police disproportionately stop Black and Brown drivers for minor infractions, intending to turn the traffic violation into a vehicle search that could turn up guns or drugs. Some say that the stops are fishing expeditions. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is one person in that camp. Last month, she announced that she is formulating a policy that could result in her office not pursuing gun and drug cases that result from “pretextual stops,” traffic stops conducted by police intending to look for evidence of other...

In December 2022, Reason reported that both state and federal wildlife agents routinely trespass onto private land and plant cameras. Two Tennessee homeowners successfully sued the state over the practice, and a three-judge panel ruled in their favor. The state appealed the decision, and this week the court of appeals ruled in the homeowners' favor. At issue is a state law allowing officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in order to "enforce all laws relating to wildlife." In the case of Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth, TWRA...

BREAKING: Speaker Mike Johnson just inexcusably voted against the American people and his voters by casting the tie-breaking vote 212-212 to defeat a FISA 702 amendment requiring a warrant to spy on Americans. This is how the Constitution dies. Brought to you by the House GOP.

You might remember FISA warrants from the infamous and disgraceful Russia hoax saga. Well, they’re making headlines again as lawmakers debate bringing back the use of the 702 FISA warrantless searches that came about after 9/11 and during the Patriot Act frenzy and were used and abused against innocent Americans. ... Everyone’s favorite warrantless surveillance tool, FISA Section 702, returns to the US House of Representatives this week and is expected to go to a full House vote on Thursday. Or, it may all fall apart (again) in the House Rules Committee on Tuesday. This week’s congressional action follows an...

Being proved right isn't always fun. Just weeks after my warning in the March issue that our modern high-tech cars are tracking us and sharing data with manufacturers, cops, and parties unknown, came a report of soaring auto insurance premiums because of snitching vehicles. The consequences get worse from there. Fortunately, there are ways to keep your snoopy ride from contacting the mothership. Your Driving History May Be Transmitted and Stored "Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles for use by the insurance industry," Kashmir Hill reported this month for The New York Times. "Sometimes this is happening...

AG Letitia James has warned she will start confiscating his wealth and property and selling it off. AG Letitia James told ABC. “If he does not have funds to pay off the judgement, then we will seek judgement enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” James told ABC, according to the Daily Express and other outlets. “We are prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers,” James said, “and yes, I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day,” she added, referring to a Trump-owned property near her...

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled on Friday that law enforcement officers in Alaska are not permitted to conduct aerial surveillance of a person’s yard using a zoom lens without first obtaining a warrant. In its ruling, the court said that it disagrees with the state’s claim that such surveillance was constitutional “because small airplane travel is so common in Alaska, and because any passenger might peer into your yard and snap a picture of you, law enforcement officials may do the same.” “The Alaska Constitution protects the right to be free of unreasonable searches,” the court stated in a 34-page...

Randolph County couple Greg and Teresa Almond were recently awarded $1 million in punitive and compensatory damages after a federal jury determined that deputies illegally raided their home six years ago. On Jan. 31, 2018, Randolph County Deputy Sheriff Nathaniel Morrow arrived at the Almond home around 2 p.m. and told Teresa that he was there to serve paperwork related to ‘a civil matter,’ according to documents from a federal civil rights lawsuit the couple filed in 2019. Teresa told Morrow that Greg wasn’t home but said that he could return in two hours to give him the paperwork then....

FBI Overstepped in Search of Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes, Court RulesThe 9th Circuit compared the searches to the “abuses of power” that “led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled. The court compared the FBI’s tactics to the kind of indiscriminate searches that led to the enactment of the Bill of Rights in the first place.In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a safe deposit box company in Beverly Hills, California. The...

Civil liberties advocates have long argued that “geofence” search warrants are unconstitutional for their ability to ensnare entirely innocent people who were nearby at the time a crime was committed. But errors in the geofence warrant applications that go before a judge can violate the privacy of vastly more people — in one case almost two miles away. Attorneys at the ACLU of Northern California found what they called an “alarming error” in a geofence warrant application that “resulted in a warrant stretching nearly two miles across San Francisco.” The error, likely caused by a typo, allowed the requesting law...

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has decided Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot.

Police said Tuesday they are investigating incidents directed at Colorado Supreme Court justices and providing extra patrols around their homes in Denver following the court’s decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot. The Denver Police Department declined in an email to provide details about its investigations, citing safety and privacy considerations and because they are ongoing. The department “is currently investigating incidents directed at Colorado Supreme Court justices and will continue working with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners to thoroughly investigate any reports of threats or harassment,” the email said. Officers...

Code is law, they say. ... Geofence warrants are warrants to obtain the location data that Google users let Google collect if they opt in to Google's location history service, which about a third of Google users do. Geofence warrants have been possible because, if you opt in, Google keeps a copy of the location history. And records are kept can be compelled, at least if the legal process is valid. All of which makes this Google announcement from yesterday of great interest. Google will no longer keep location history even for the users who opted in to have it...

WASHINGTON — Opening statements began Monday in a trial to determine how much Rudy Giuliani will have to pay two former Georgia election workers after he was found liable for defaming them with baseless claims that they committed fraud in the 2020 election. Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, sued Giuliani over the bogus claims, which they say upended their lives. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and former federal prosecutor, was found to have defamed the two women, including by falsely claiming they were handing around what he alleged were USB drives "like they were vials...

House and Senate conservatives on Wednesday sounded the alarm on a potential move by congressional leadership to extend a deep state surveillance law in a defense bill. “Reauthorization of FISA can’t be hooked to anything. The federal GOV has spied on Americans [who] decided to go to Church or you went to a school board meeting. This needs to end. Reauthorization needs to stand on its own, and have significant reform,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-PA) said during a press conference with the House Freedom Caucus and Senate conservatives. The conservatives held their press conference as congressional leaders...

Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Humphrey (R-Lane) sent a letter to the Oklahoma Attorney General, the Sheriff of Pushmataha County, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and “All Oklahoma judicial authorities and other law enforcement entities,” requesting an investigation into ATF’s SWAT team raid at the home of his constituent, Russell Fincher. According to a press release, Humphrey said he was contacted by Fincher after a dozen ATF SWAT team members bearing “automatic weapons” raided Fincher’s home, handcuffed him on his porch in front of his 13-year-old son and coerced him into relinquishing his Federal Firearm License. “If this report is true, and...

7 min video - showing and explaining Jim Jordan’s letter to Garland. Letter requests data concerning use of geofencing Jan 6 and why the FBI refused to use geofencing in any other riot 2020 even though it had been requested in many cities. Geofencing is a fence that collects data from every phone in the area and sends it to google for processing. Jordan is requesting data on who did what concerning the use and denial of geofencing. Robert Gouveia is a lawyer with a podcast. He shows and explains the letter in this video.He covers many of the lawsuits/indictments...

The latest unsealed court filings shows that special counsel Jack Smith has all of President Donald Trump’s direct messages, including the deleted and unsent ones. We learned last week that the feds served Twitter with a warrant for Trump’s account. The company resisted. The court then fined the platform $350,000 and held it in contempt. The judge suspected Twitter wanted to delay the handover because CEO Elon Musk wanted “to cozy up” to Trump. I rolled my eyes. The government demanded everything. It seemed that no one in the room knew anything about the old fleets. Remember those? Twitter tried...