No, you'll see illegally gathered evidence thrown out, and the prosecutor could be in real danger of losing their case too if that's all they had to go on.
>Michael Carson became the focus of a theft investigation involving money allegedly taken from a neighbor’s safe.
>Authorities secured a warrant to search his phone, but the document placed no boundaries on what could be examined.
>It permitted access to all data on the device, including messages, photos, contacts, and documents, without any restriction based on time period or relevance. Investigators collected over a thousand pages of information, much of it unrelated to the accusation.
A good HackerNews poll would be to ask how many people have had their phones cloned by the police, I didn't know it was uncommon. I guess they've stopped since phones are encrypted.
The current government refuses entry for political opinions by forcing people to give away their phone passwords. It is like a political test purge on a small scale showing what will happen to the country the minute they can free themselves from this pesky constitution.
Not sure what your definition of forcing is, but you are well within your rights to decline to provide any passwords in the US. You may not get the device back (or want it back), but in theory nothing should happen to you.
The 100-mile border zone thing is a myth ACLU uses to fundraise. There have been SCOTUS cases knocking the idea down. There has to be some nexus to an actual border crossing for "border zone" rules to apply. About the most it seems the government can sustainably do is set up fixed checkpoints, and even those are legally problematic.
This comes up on HN several times a year; there are longer discussions about it available in the search bar.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to observe when a detective came to a magistrate's office to petition for a search warrant. The warrant sought to search the contents of a person's phone, essentially without any limitations. The alleged crime was assault and battery on a family member. When asked "What is your probable cause that the phone is likely to contain evidence of the commission of this crime?" the detective had basically nothing to say (having put nothing to that effect in the affidavit for the search warrant) other than some vague (cooked up on the spot?) statements about the "mobile nature of our modern society and the fact that cell phones are everywhere and everyone has one." The magistrate denied the warrant, but it's a sad testament to the propensity of law enforcement to cut corners that that search warrant affidavit was far from the last one I saw that targeted the cell phone of an accused and claimed that it was necessary to search the entire contents of the phone.
Is that cutting corners? It sounds more like trying to break the law so they could find _anything_ to throw at the guy.
With how many laws we have on the books, everyone on the planet can be found guilty of some violation if their life is examined with a fine toothed comb
It very much blows my mind, but also sadly unsurprising.
I watched a local Superior Court hearing, where a prosecutor argued against a motion to revoke bail/bond conditions. Thankfully, the Judge had a different perspective:
Prosecutor: "Because blah blah blah, and in addition, the defendant shows zero signs of taking responsibility for his actions, we..."
Judge, cutting her off: "I'm going to stop you there. The defendant entered a plea of not guilty and has not been found guilty at trial as of this moment. In the eyes of the court, the defendant has precisely zero obligation to take responsibility for alleged actions."
I was also juror on a trial for theft (stealing from an organization by the treasurer). The theft had occurred but the amount of rubber stamping was horrific. "It looks like $50K was stolen, including approximately $20K in diverted checks". In fact, the bank statements showed that no checks were diverted, and it was painfully obvious (in the statements, in some months, the checks claimed to be diverted were the -only- transactions, so it wasn't a hard find), and there was even a statement from the organization's president, taken by the Sheriff's Office, "It was later found that the checks had been deposited properly". But everyone, Sheriff, org, prosecutor had "oops, failed to remove that amount from the claimed loss", and the defendant's attorney had to bend over backwards to demonstrate this. At one point, the prosecutor had said "Demonstrate to us how you came to the number of $30K"... "Uh, if you want to claim the loss is $50K, it's on you to prove THAT. It's not on us to prove it is LESS".
Another magistrate in the same building may have granted it. That part of the legal process as they say, sometimes contains preliminary information and may be prone to errors.
You're making the argument that the system is broken with an example of the system working? I guess the semantic trick is that you don't reveal that the system actually stopped him until the very end of the comment, and in much less space. About 2/3 of the comment is describing the warrent, only the last 1/3 reveals that it's a nothing burger because it was denied.
Obviously law enforcement are going to cut corners. They're human beings, who are mostly interested in stopping crime. That's exactly why we force them to get warrents, to have a dispassionate believer in "the Law" as an ideal concept check in with their investigation.
>A four-justice majority agreed. They emphasized that digital search warrants must be precise, listing exactly what investigators are seeking and explaining why those specific data types or timeframes are relevant
How do they limit the police to what was in the warrant? How do they prevent them police from searching the entire phone, and if they find something else incriminating, use parallel construction to find other evidence that justifies a warrant for a broader phone search? "We didn't find anything in our initial phone search, but now we have an informant that told us to look at his email in November last year"
21 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 42.5 ms ] thread>Authorities secured a warrant to search his phone, but the document placed no boundaries on what could be examined.
>It permitted access to all data on the device, including messages, photos, contacts, and documents, without any restriction based on time period or relevance. Investigators collected over a thousand pages of information, much of it unrelated to the accusation.
Yeah that's pretty absurd.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
Also friendly reminder that "the Constitution does not grant aliens any protections when trying to enter the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_ex_rel._Knauff_v...
Not sure what your definition of forcing is, but you are well within your rights to decline to provide any passwords in the US. You may not get the device back (or want it back), but in theory nothing should happen to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Stat...
This comes up on HN several times a year; there are longer discussions about it available in the search bar.
With how many laws we have on the books, everyone on the planet can be found guilty of some violation if their life is examined with a fine toothed comb
I watched a local Superior Court hearing, where a prosecutor argued against a motion to revoke bail/bond conditions. Thankfully, the Judge had a different perspective:
Prosecutor: "Because blah blah blah, and in addition, the defendant shows zero signs of taking responsibility for his actions, we..."
Judge, cutting her off: "I'm going to stop you there. The defendant entered a plea of not guilty and has not been found guilty at trial as of this moment. In the eyes of the court, the defendant has precisely zero obligation to take responsibility for alleged actions."
I was also juror on a trial for theft (stealing from an organization by the treasurer). The theft had occurred but the amount of rubber stamping was horrific. "It looks like $50K was stolen, including approximately $20K in diverted checks". In fact, the bank statements showed that no checks were diverted, and it was painfully obvious (in the statements, in some months, the checks claimed to be diverted were the -only- transactions, so it wasn't a hard find), and there was even a statement from the organization's president, taken by the Sheriff's Office, "It was later found that the checks had been deposited properly". But everyone, Sheriff, org, prosecutor had "oops, failed to remove that amount from the claimed loss", and the defendant's attorney had to bend over backwards to demonstrate this. At one point, the prosecutor had said "Demonstrate to us how you came to the number of $30K"... "Uh, if you want to claim the loss is $50K, it's on you to prove THAT. It's not on us to prove it is LESS".
An LEO citing to Carpenter for the opposite of its holding?
Obviously law enforcement are going to cut corners. They're human beings, who are mostly interested in stopping crime. That's exactly why we force them to get warrents, to have a dispassionate believer in "the Law" as an ideal concept check in with their investigation.
How do they limit the police to what was in the warrant? How do they prevent them police from searching the entire phone, and if they find something else incriminating, use parallel construction to find other evidence that justifies a warrant for a broader phone search? "We didn't find anything in our initial phone search, but now we have an informant that told us to look at his email in November last year"
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Verdugo-Urqui...