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California Governor Vetoes Ban On Warrantless Phone Searches
kodiaktau writes "In probably the most important decision Gov. Brown of California will make this year, he has vetoed the bill that would require officers to get a search warrant before searching cellular phones of arrested citizens. This further enables the police to carry out warrantless searches of private property extending into contacts, email, photos, banking activity, GPS, and other functions that are controlled by modern phones. 'He cites a recent California Supreme Court decision upholding the warrantless searches of people incident to an arrest. In his brief message (PDF), he also doesn’t say whether it’s a good idea or not. Instead, he says the state Supreme Court’s decision is good enough, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court let stand last week.'"
I'd like a remote backup and 1-button wipe app...
So how many Californians will vote for him again? How many will also buy the official line about why they did it, which likely includes 'public safety or protecting the children'
Every other day we are seeing another example of how the ones who were supposed to exercise power on behalf of the people have become enemies of the people.
Some people utter empty stuff like "vote em' out" and whatnot - but, if it has been possible, we wouldnt have been in this situation have we ? whomever you vote, result is the same. the machine has been usurped by those who serve the few. laws work differently for the rich and the poor.
can you say with a rational mind that, things like occupy movement are unnecessary in such a world ?
Read radical news here
Wow. It was my impression that the supreme court judged cases based on existing law, and the legislature wrote new law. Perhaps the legislature wrote this law because it disagreed with the recent court decision. Part of why the legislature exists is to create and/or update laws in response to changing times and public opinion.
To Governor Brown: If the supreme court believes this law is unconstitutional, they can strike it down. Don't overstep your powers and do this for them. Unless *YOU,* on behalf of your constituents, have a specific objection: let the law pass.
(For the record, I live in CA and voted for Jerry Brown in the last election)
Scott Swezey
According to TFA, the bill was approved with 70-0 in the assembly and 32-4 in the state senate. Can't they just override this asshat?
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Its becoming a race to the bottom, with all three branches of government at both the federal and state level pushing each other to invade privacy and erode rights further and further. Putting either a Democrat or Republican in office doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. What exactly does that leave? Who do we replace them with (when voting them out is even an option). Several members of the Supreme Court have indicated they sit on the bench to further corporate interests at the expense of individual rights. What recourse do we have?
And vote in who? That's the problem, there is no candidate or major party right now that could come close to winning a stamp of approval from folks who care about civil liberties.
I am officially gone from
If they want to be this way, vote 'em out. Bastards.
All well and good in theory, but in practice it only helps if the alternative isn't even worse. And in the contemporary US, the alternative to a lousy Democrat is usually a much lousier Republican.
(Yes, I know about third party candidates. Unfortunately, our elections are set up in such a way that the only real effect third party candidates can have is to siphon support away from the mainstream candidate they most resemble... which means that voting third party makes it less likely that the third party's policy goals will be realized. Sad, but true.)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Brown had to- Otherwise how could he listen in to be sure we weren't plotting something like..oh, I don't know, maybe not giving all our money to illegal aliens so they can go to school here and take seats away from the residents like the other bill he is supposed to sign. He is really trying hard to ruin this state. Almost as hard as Obama is trying to ruin this country.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
So does this mean if I had an SSH client on my phone, with a certificate installed to automatically log me in to a private server at my home, that police can search my home computer via my phone as well?
I think it's fair to make the same comparison of them looking at my Facebook or Twitter account as well, because that's private data which is password-protected. The fact that my phone is automatically logged into those services does not change that fact. Much the same as if they went to my house and my door was unlocked. They're not allowed inside, regardless.
Computer laws in this country, and lack there-of, is definitely a concern.
As I understand it from reading Prof. Orin Kerr's blogs and law review articles, this is a developing area of Constitutional law. Searches incident arrest are not intended to be something that allows an officer to search all locked containers within arms reach of the suspect when he is arrested, as I understand it. So the question really comes down to what category a phone falls into. And not all phones may be created equal. It may be that smart phones are entitled to more protection than low-end cell phones. But as the US Supreme Court has not been clear on this yet, it's up to the state and circuit courts to try to sort this issue out.
So in the end, the veto may or may not amount to anything.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Really? THE most important? California is the most populous state in the Union and is in the middle of a budget crisis, its school system is in disarray, its unemployment rate is over 12%, there is a huge drug trafficking problem, human trafficking problem, public official corruption problem and whether a cop can search your *phone* is the largest issue on the Governor's plate for the ENTIRE YEAR? Who thinks this? Are these the same people that agonize over which color sweater their dog should wear this winter? Stuck in the supermarket for hours deciding on getting the regular or fancy mustard? Come on people.
I'm all for laws requiring the government to get its ducks in a row before they start pawing through my stuff and I think that veto was a poor choice on the Governor's part but this is by far NOT the most important issue in California's near future.
That's right. The officer doesn't. Those records are actually best and easily obtained from the wireless carrier with a warrant. The evidence (in your example) won't change state if the investigators follow the constitution.
Why do we need a law when warrentless searching of ones personal documents is clearly a violation of the constitution? Oh, that's right, we don't have a constitution anymore. I forgot.
Sure, search it. With a warrant.
Beware of the Leopard.
According to the World English Dictionary:
1. Also called: personal effects personal property or belongings
According to the Bill of Rights:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
What about that is so complicated that the courts and the governor can't understand it? A cellphone is an effect and the Bill of rights says you need a warrant to search those. It offers no exceptions.
Yes! because it is not the officers job to build a case at the time of arrest. That can be done by the district attorney using the existing methods at their disposal, namely warrants and subpoenas. The officer can make note of and seize items immediately noticeable, such as an open bottle in the passenger seat or the fact that a driver had a cell phone. But items that require more detailed investigation, like the contents of a cell phone, should be accompanied by a warrant authorizing the search, which any judge would sign off on if it is relevant to the case. If cops want to go fishing, they can grab a pole and head to the wharf like everyone else. Not do it on someone else's personal papers.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
Good to see the Democrats acting as a counterbalance to the Republicans.
Big government Republicans and big government Democrats both lead to a loss of rights. It's not the party, it's the Big Government; it is incompatible with citizens rights. I'd suggest voting for libertarianesque Republicans or Tea Party (Not all of them, I know!). Those people don't want the goverment to fuck with you so they shouldn't go against your social agenda even if they don't agree with you. I know it's hard if you hold the view that the government should help people, but there really only are two options; a small government OR an intrusive one.
"And vote in who? That's the problem, there is no candidate or major party right now that could come close to winning a stamp of approval from folks who care about civil liberties."
Really? Are you going to be like most of the media outlets that have ignored Ron Paul?
In 30 years of politics, he has never broken a campaign promise; he has invariably voted exactly the way he said he would. He has consistently voted against unconstitutional laws, even when his stance was unpopular.
He predicted exactly the current economic situation well before it happened, when all the others were exclaiming about how well the economy was doing, right up to the crash in 2008. (Herman Cain, for example, is on video proclaiming the wonderful state of the economy, one week before the crash.)
The difference between Paul, and the other current candidates who have been saying things people have been wanting to hear, is that Paul has been consistently saying the same things for many years. The others are just saying them because they know that's what people want to hear.
And he has been consistently leading in the polls, and also making good campaign money. He received twice as much campaign money from enlisted military personnel than all the other GOP candidates combined, and more than Obama as well. That should tell you something.
He has also been leading the straw polls.
So, to summarize: he has proven himself to be honest, he has been dedicated to changing government in a good way, even when that view was unpopular, and he is popular. What more do you want?
It was the supreme court of the state of CA, not SCOTUS, and since they didn't rule that a specific law was unconstitutional, I believe a new law would supersede their decision... unless of course they ruled that the new law violated the state constitution.
Remember, the court makes decisions within the bounds of current law. Unless a law violates the constitution, the courts are overridden by the law. Not the other way around.
Scott Swezey
Don't confuse Democrats with Liberals or Republicans with Conservatives. Neither are either.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Do you really need your whole life on your phone? Isn't a contact list and a calendar/alarm (as well as the ability to talk/text) more than enough?
Fun fact: you could use a dumbphone and then do all your email/games/etc from an Ipod touch or some such. Just chuck your touch under your car seat when you see the cop drive up. Then let 'em search your phone...there's nothing there.
You sound like you care about your civil liberties yet don't know about Ron Paul? Either you don't really care or you have been sleeping under a rock.
The SCOTUS didn't strike down a similar bill, they just didn't disagree with the California Supreme Court in their assessment that lets police search cell phones of people they arrest. It's entirely in the legislature's rights to then say, 'oh that's not how it should be' and pass more protections against searches. I don't really see anything unconstitutional about law makers passing restrictions on what police, a part of the government, can do against citizens. If it was the other way around, for example allowing searches when there should be protections, then yes it should be struck down.
In order to prevail at anything hard, you must go through a period of tribulation. Your attitude is to just give up, which means you definitely lose. It's defeatist and pointless to not try for something better just because there will be hard times on the way.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Ron Paul was 'predicting' the current situation since well into 90-s. So no, it doesn't count.
If in the 1990s someone told you, "Your computer won't run the most popular OS in 2011." Would they have been wrong? Ron Paul had the foresight to see that the economy was on an unsustainable course back in the 1990s, long before the dot com crash. It does not take a genius to look at the history of fiat currencies and the inevitable boom / bust cycles to say, "This is going to come off the rails eventually."
And during the crisis he's been constantly mis-predicting, well, everything (runaway inflation, hellllo?).
Outside of CPI, inflation has been going up significantly.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=59409
And last, but not least - his recipes to help the economy are disastrous.
They are now. If they had been implemented earlier we might have had a chance. As it stands, the middle class in America will be all but completely wiped out in the next generation. There is not anything that Ron Paul, or anyone else can do about it. The dynamics of the world have shifted. The American standard of living will only decline from here on out.
Yeah, like if they arrest you for disorderly conduct or assembling without a permit?
I'm sure it's already been said, but if we didn't have a drug war we wouldn't be having this discussion. The drug war just may end up destroying the western liberal tradition.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Danger Will Robinson, another fruit loop who has bought into the Shadow Stats hooey.
It's quite easy to prove that the CPI and not Shadow Stats is correct; massive studies on price information have been collected via Google Search to form Google's Price Index and similar studies by MIT to form their BillionPrice data. The fact is that the government CPI information is an accurate measure of inflation.
http://blog.jparsons.net/2011/06/shadow-stats-debunked-part-ii.html
Indeed, Ron Paul passes the "Is the candidate a lying, corrupt sack of shit?" test. Unfortunately, I disagree with him on how to run the country. So, back to square one. If we can get not just three or four candidates of Ron Paul integrity spread accross the spectrum, but thousands of such candidates to fill local positions as well, then we can say we have something to vote for. Until then, no.
"sometimes he felt that his whole life was a dream, and he wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."
The SCOTUS did no such thing. In People v. Diaz, the California Supreme Court held that warrantless searches of a cellphone was consistent with the protections of the U.S. Constitution and the CA State constitution. In other words, they interpreted a Police Procedure in light of State and Federal Constitutions. There was no statute involved.
In saying the SCOTUS 'let stand' that decision, this merely means that they chose not to grant certiorari. This is not affirming the decision, this is not striking down something similar, this is merely REFUSING to consider the question to begin with. There are numerous reasons the Court might do this: First, the issue involved a matter of State constitutional interpretation - a matter best left to individual states. This is because the California State Constitution recognizes more privacy protections than the U.S. Constitution. Second, the SCOTUS may be waiting for more opinions from other courts before they take on the issue. The search of cellphones is still relatively immature across the states and circuits. Third, alternately, the facts of Diaz may be unambiguous under federal protections, rendering intervention unnecessary.
OP is correct that Gov. Brown has this exactly backwards. A bill requiring heightened protections for cell phones does nothing to "overturn" the Cal. Sup. court's decision, as it does not change the way the court applies and interprets Constitutional protections. It instead, by legislative powers, creates a circumstance under which the State may provide more protections than the Constitution requires. This is explicitly and unambiguously allowed under the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A State may ALWAYS choose to provide more protections than the Constitution requires, it simply may not provide less.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
The courts interpreted current law and came to the conclusion that these kinds of warrantless searches were legal.
That is why the law is being changed: it doesn't reflect what we the people want.
In effect the governor's justification for the veto is: "you can't pass this new law because it would change existing law". Well, that's the whole point of passing a new law!
You have no rights.
Only corporatiions and bankers who pay off the politicians have rights.
Occupy! Stand up against the tyrants who've taken over, wherever you may be.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Actually, food, energy, and medical expenses are all part of the CPI. (Food is 17% of it according to wikipedia.) Somehow the government gets blamed for substituting hamburger for steak AND for not including food at all.
Some of the confusion is because there is another index called core inflation which doesn't include food or gas. This is useful for some purposes, but the CPI is more important because it is intended to reflect actual spending, and because inflation-adjusted payments (such as Social Security checks and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities coupons) are generally keyed off the CPI.
"But Ron Paul is much, much more than that. He's the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. He's an anti-reproductive-rights Republican. He's a gay-demonizing Republican. He's an anti-public education Republican and an anti-Social Security Republican. He's the John Birch Society's favorite congressman. And he's a booster of the Constitution Party, which has a Christian Reconstructionist platform. So, if you're a member of the anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality, anti-education, pro-communist-witch-hunt wing of the progressive movement, I can see how he'd be your guy."
Point by point: (1) Paul stated that he would vote against the Civil Rights Act, not because it was not well-intended, but because it is unconsitutional! And it is. He takes pride in the fact that he votes on principle, and for the Constitution, every time, no exceptions. The fact that the Civil Rights Act was well-intended is irrelevant; it is in fact unconstitutional. His position is that if somebody wants to pass something like the Civil Rights act, fine! You just have to amend the constitution first to make it legal. It has absolutely nothing to do with race or racism. Sorry, but playing the race card here won't work, for the simple reason that it's BS. His statements are on the record and there is no trace of racism anywhere in them.
(2) He is not an "anti-reproductive-rights Republican". That is simply a lie. Does he personally believe in abortion? No. He has repeatedly, and honestly, stated that he is personally against abortion. However, you can't leave out the rest without lying by omission: he has also repeatedly refused to back Federal abortion legislation. He believes (quite properly) that is unconstitutional and is to be left up to the individual states. The fact that he opposes Federal abortion laws, on principle and in the face of his own personal beliefs, says much for Paul's integrity. This is a point in his favor, not against him.
(3) "He's a gay-demonizing Republican". Now, you simply can't get more BS than this. Again, his personal beliefs aside (yes, he has stated that he personally believes marriage should be between a man and a woman), again Paul has opposed Federal legislation in that regard, because marriage is simply none of the Federal government's business. He has fought attempts by the Federal government to "define" what marriage ought to be. If you happen to be gay, you should be thankful for this, rather than "demonizing" Paul himself for imaginary harms.
(4) It is true he is opposed to Federal involvement in public education and also Social Security. (But not against public education! That's not the same thing!) For the simple reason that Federal involvement in either of those is unconstitutional. So what? You should be against them too. If you're not, it is you who has a problem. A government that ignores the constitution is no government worthy of the name.
(5) "He's the John Birch Society's favorite congressman." I don't know if that is true or false, but so what? What is he trying to say here? That because one group of people likes him, other people should not? Talk about guilt by association... what a nasty, unethical thing to do to somebody. Paul has no control over who says they like him and who doesn't. This is so far the most BS argument of them all.
(5) He is not a "booster" of the Constitution Party, for the simple reason that the Constitution Party, despite its name, supports too many UN-constitutional things. Paul does support, to a certain degree, the Libertarian party, but the Libertarian party actually tends to alienate right-wing Christians. Rather, it probably contains more atheists.
(6) "So, if you're a member of the anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality, anti-education, pro-comm
So, instead of big government you vote for big corporations. Like most people with any sense, I'd rather have big government as I at least get to vote for them. That being said, apart from libtards, most people recognize that you can have a moderately sized government, even if it does somewhat fluctuate in size without ending up in some Orwell novel.
"Using folksy language and insisting on "facts" while you present misinformed distortions is not an effective argument."
You are asserting that what I have stated is somehow incorrect? Where are your own facts to back them up? Am I the one ignoring facts here? Funny you should say that.
Like that link you gave as "evidence". I have already stated the well-known fact that Paul is personally against abortion, and has made no secret of it. However, what YOU are leaving out is that he has consistently opposed Federal abortion regulation. That is fact. Look it the hell, up, fool. Presenting only some of the facts, while pretending the more relevant facts don't exist, is a form of lying. The only fool here is you, but apparently you're expecting us to be, too.
And what you call his "dancing around" is actually a perfectly consistent 30-year-long voting record against any kind of Federal regulation of marriage, sex, or abortion. Are you honestly trying to tell me you think he has been faking it for 30 years, just so he can sneak into the White House and fool us all??? Sheesh. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
As for other "facts" (which you have refused to cite, instead linking to inflammatory sites that present only half-truths at best) the FACT is that the majority of the Federal government's claim to authority for passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the Interstate Commerce Clause, which is one of the biggest piles of bullshit they have ever pulled. The Feds have used the Commerce Clause to excuse everything from gun laws and regulating home gardens to the War on Drugs. And it's all BS. True students of history know that the commerce clause had a restrictive meaning; it was never intended to extend Federal power to anything like it is now.
I have been an avid student of American history for many years now, and it is not I who has a misconception about the Constitution. However, a full discussion of that is beyond Slashdot. So I will have to be content to say that the Commerce Clause does not come close to authorizing Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, any more than it authorizes anything like the War on Drugs. Regardless of whether you love or hate either of those things.
"How about a candidate that understands Modern Monetary Theory?"
Because "modern" monetary theory is what got us into this mess in the first place. DUH. But that begs the question... the real issue here is that just because something is new, that doesn't mean it's right. Chartalism has many obvious flaws, amongst them that it actually advocates fiat money with floating exchange rates, when history actually rather powerfully indicates that such a system is in fact the cause of most of our current problems.
At least Austrian economics has a long history of contributing essential math and concepts to economic theory, and has enjoyed an excellent record (unlike either Keynesian economics or "Chartalism") of actually predicting major economic events. And prediction, as any scientist will tell you, is all a theory is worth.
I agree that government misapplication of monetary policy has contributed greatly -- or even caused -- our current economic woes. But I am far from convinced that a system that practically worships the very systems that have failed us would make things any better.