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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.'"
How many Californians are actually going to remember this when its time to vote?
About 45 activists who know better. And if they do know better they know damn well that if they vote for the other party, that candidate will be much, much worse.
This isn't something solved by voting. Not anymore.
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.
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
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.
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.
There is a two-term limit but it only applies to terms served after November 6th, 1990. For term limit purposes, this is his first term.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"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?
Don't confuse Democrats with Liberals or Republicans with Conservatives. Neither are either.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
See, the thing is, California in its present state is more or less ungovernable. I and others who voted for Jerry Brown did so, at least to some extent, because as a former governor he was uniquely situated to be honest about this, and was prepared to work within the limitations of his office. Becoming governor was hardly going to be a feather in his cap when he'd already served two terms. He's also campaigned both for the Senate and the Presidency in the past; both campaigns failed. His last executive position was as Mayor of Oakland, where opinion about him was pretty mixed. So in a way, he has more to prove than any other candidate if he still harbors further political ambitions. People know him too well. I believe he's content to be what he is: a career California politician who just wants to make a difference. I, for one, certainly don't envy him the position of governor.
Would I vote for him again? That depends on many things. Remember, last time he ran against Meg Whitman.
Breakfast served all day!
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.
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.
Best yet: How about we as a people take a stand against unreasonable search and seizure like our founding fathers intended with that little thing called the fourth amendment?
/rant
Am I the only one who is indignant that we're already trying to come up with ways to circumvent this rather than to fix it properly? Let's stop trying to use band-aids to patch up these "little inconveniences" to the Bill of Rights.
Damn, call me an idealist but I'm getting sick of this. And not that I'm a gun nut - but isn't Gov. Brown the same guy who just said that it's illegal to publicly display a firearm in his state? Who the hell does this guy think he is? Why are you standing for this, Cali?
Why are you standing for this, Cali?
Because we, inexplicably, vote for whoever has the (D) next to their name, regardless of who that person is. Not to say that ol' Meg Whitman was a great alternative, but we elected a crazy old man who already screwed up this state the first time around!
Hey, I'm all for taking a stand, but at the end of the day, I'm gonna cover my ass by making sure the phone they search is useless anyway. Being legally in the right doesn't much matter when they can make your life miserable regardless.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. It's the people that assume their "rights" will protect them that end up losing every damn time. Better to assume they won't and leave them with nothing either way.
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!
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
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?
No, I don't need to. But I want to, and it's supposed to be a free country.
I am trolling
In fact, they are not releasing tens of thousands of prisoners, which is what they probably should do, but of course we can't afford the review necessary to pick them out, either. Instead, they are dumping them on the counties, which will bankrupt some of them. The counties seem to have the opportunity to "simply" place them on some kind of lightweight parole program, which would still require additional staff, but not as much.
Disingenuous again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"