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EFF Urges Court To Protect Privacy of Text Messages
netbuzz writes "The police in Washington state arrested a suspected drug dealer, rummaged through the text messages on his phone, responded to one message while pretending to be the suspect, arranged a meeting, and then arrested the recipient of the text — all without a warrant. The state argues – and an appeals court majority agreed – that both suspects had neither a legal expectation of privacy nor Fourth Amendment protection because both considerations evaporate the moment that any text message arrives on any phone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is urging the state's Supreme Court to overturn that decision and recognize that 'text messages are the 21st Century phone call.'"
identity theft.. inciting to crime.. unauthorized use of communications device(guess who got the bill for the sms's?)... you guys sure have a fucked police! (sms is either a phone call or more appropriately it's a letter).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
no warrant was required because there should be no expectation of privacy in text messages, as anyone can pick up someone else's phone and read what's stored there.
and B) the EFF claims
"The state argues that just because someone can intercept a communication, you should reasonably expect that communication to be intercepted.
Remember the 4th amendment says "and papers" it does not say "and private papers that no one else can see" There are lots of things that anyone can pickup and read... a letter in an envelope (which can be intercepted as well)
There is a difference between glancing over someone's shoulder and seeing the text on the screen and physically taking the device, navigating to the text message section and scrolling through the messages.
We have every right and expectation that those texts will be private. As long as they aren't on the screen as we wave the phone around in the air.
Why does everything like this have to go to the Supreme Court?
Clearly the police were in violation of the computer fraud and abuse act.
Put 'em in jail.
All they had to do was get a warrant. If they had enough evidence to pick this guy up, I'm sure any judge would gladly sign off on a warrant to 'search' his phone and then follow the proper procedures for the ensuing sting operation. This is sloppy police work, nothing more, and now the public is being forced to pay the price for it by being forced to pay for court challenges because no one has the guts to admit they were sloppy.
Better than the drug raids on people who own cars or houses the police want. Raid and take it all. It's not as uncommon as it should be, there was one in CA where the guy had a gun he grabbed during the home invasion. The police ordered his "hands up" Another ordered him to "put the gun down" While moving his hand from above his head to the ground to comply with both orders, he was killed. No drugs were found. I think that was yet another the police claimed was a "mistake". http://www.druglibrary.org/think/~jnr/botched.htm for another. Hundreds of examples out there.
Learn to love Alaska
If you've arrested them under suspicion of a felony and are conducting a search of their person then yes. Otherwise no.
Innocent until proven guilty?
Is there any constitutional difference on the level of guilt of a policeman/judge and a suspect under investigation?
The fact that one is a suspect, does it make the one automatically lose some or all their constitutional rights?
You really want me to start "suspecting" you?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Basically, it's a free messaging services where the messages self-destruct. They never get written do disk, just to volatile memory. If there's an outage messages will be lost, which sucks, but it does mean that they kind of mean business about privacy. The messages have a maximum shelf life of 30 days.
Here's a writeup in Techcrunch.
I don't know if it's going to get that big but I realized the other day that even in my non-criminal, law-abiding life there are still a lot of things that I send to people via SMS that I probably should not have. Lots. Of. Things.
They have a tech FAQ which goes into detail about encryption, privacy, etc.
The enemy of my enemy is quite possibly also my enemy. I've made a lot of enemies.
Did you actually read that part? The search and seizure in the case of an arrest is only reasonable for the immediate area and only to secure weapons and evidence. To quote your own article - "The justification for such a search is to prevent the arrested individual from destroying evidence or using a weapon against the arresting officer."
Do you imagine that the signers of the 4th would have thought it "reasonable" that when a man is arrested the police can use his signet ring to send false messages to whomever they like without judicial oversight?
So what part of coax or coerce didn't make sense?
If you regularly buy large amounts of H then there should be actual legal ways they could use to catch you in commission of that crime without stealing someone's identity and tricking you into trying to buy drugs from them, which is entrapment.
The ends DO NOT justify the means. If you cannot trust the police to follow the law, then no one should be expected to follow it.
I got here through a series of tubes
You're conflating the "reasonableness" requirement with the requirement for a warrant: When you get arrested it's reasonable to search you, and it doesn't require a warrant. When that search reveals a bag of cocaine it's reasonable to search your house, but the police still have to get a warrant.
The defense in this case is making an analogy between a cell phone and house keys - you can search for and confiscate them from a person as part of an arrest without a warrant, but you have to get a warrant to use them to collect further evidence.