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Federal Court Nixes Weeks of Warrantless Video Surveillance
An anonymous reader writes with this news from the EFF's Deep Links:
The public got an early holiday gift today when a federal court agreed with us that six weeks of continually video recording the front yard of someone's home without a search warrant violates the Fourth Amendment. In United States v. Vargas local police in rural Washington suspected Vargas of drug trafficking. In April 2013, police installed a camera on top of a utility pole overlooking his home. Even though police did not have a warrant, they nonetheless pointed the camera at his front door and driveway and began watching every day. A month later, police observed Vargas shoot some beer bottles with a gun and because Vargas was an undocumented immigrant, they had probable cause to believe he was illegally possessing a firearm. They used the video surveillance to obtain a warrant to search his home, which uncovered drugs and guns, leading to a federal indictment against Vargas.
If he's an undocumented immigrant, why don't they just deport him instead of going through all of this?
I'm all for the forth amendment and all, but having a camera pointed to the outside of his house is no different than having a cop sitting outside the house in a car.
If you point the camera on a politician you won't have to wait a month to watch a crime to happen.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
America is rapidly deciding that her guiding principles are optional, and that the law only applies if law enforcement says it does.
Wide spread warrantless wiretapping, surveillance, and parallel construction all say that the police and government will do whatever the hell they like, and your rights be damned. And if they have to lie to the court to get what they want, that's OK too.
And for all of those who claim you still have free speech and all that ... the answer is simply for now. When it becomes expedient to take away that right, they will.
Land of the free, home of the brave. If it wasn't so scary it would be hilarious.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The wording of the natural rights in the Constitution's Bill of Rights don't mention citizenship as a requirement for those rights applying. Court rulings have allowed for narrower interpretations (ie, firearms potentially) but otherwise, the same rules governing the treatment of citizens govern the treatment of everyone else.
This is part of the reason why so many peopel got upset by the 'black sites' used to hold those grabbed in 'extraordinary rendition' protocols and held, and likely tortured, it was an attempt to get around the Contitution's rules regarding the treatment of people by keeping them off of US soil. What was argued and is still argued, is that those engaging in the business of the United States of America, whether on American soil or abroad, should still be bound by the Constitution and laws when working in their official capacity. This is also why rules of war matter, as those rules are what are supposed to allow for different treatment.
But we haven't declared war since WWII if memory serves, so I guess in practice, those conditions have been eroding since the Korean War.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Why does the fourth amendment apply? If he is not a citizen of the US, our laws shouldn't protect him.
Did you think about the consequences of what you are saying even for a second?
"...he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed..."
Why does the fourth amendment apply? If he is not a citizen of the US, our laws shouldn't protect him.
Because the Constitution is a document describing what powers the government has and how these powers may be used. It's like a default-deny firewall: the government has no powers whatsoever, except these enumerated powers. The Constitution is emphatically not a document describing what rights a person (citizen or not) has and when they will be honored.
The document was written based on the idea of "natural rights". You have certain rights simply because you are a human being; the government either recognizes that or it becomes dysfunctional and fails to fulfill its major purpose, which is to protect your natural rights. The Founders (mostly Deists) explained it in terms of us having been "endowed by our Creator" with such rights. You could also remove the Creator-concept entirely and argue that such a system simply works better and does the greatest good for all involved, and thus is inherently superior to systems that reject the concept of natural rights.
You don't have rights merely because the government deigned to let you have them, or decided that depriving you of them wasn't worth the trouble. A system where that's the foundational principle has lost even the pretense of human dignity. That kind of system wouldn't even have to bother with the incremental "hey we have an excuse that sells (protect the children! stop the terrorists!)" encroachment of liberty that we're seeing now. It could just go straight into open tyranny without having all those little baby steps for naive people to ignore.
You may wish to brush up on a little American history, specifically why the Tenth Amendment was written. It affirms that the federal government has only those powers which are delegated to it, with the rest being reserved by the states and the people. I'm all for deporting this guy, by the way. We should either enforce our immigration laws (like Mexico and every other sovereign nation) or repeal them, but if we're going to arrest this man, there's a process that must (and should) be followed.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I hear it's open season on tourists. I'm going to Vegas to hunt me some Brits.
A cop bought a video camera to catch an illegal alien unloading a firearm at bottles on his own porch, among other things...catches the guy, along with a significant drug operation no less...and the court "nixes weeks of warrantless video surveillance" is a GOOD THING? You'll notice they aren't nixing the YEARS of warrantless surveillance that every citizen of the U.S. has been under, nor the YEARS of collusion with friendly nations to extend that surveillance program to every citizen, worldwide. No, they're nixing the one bit of fucking video that might actually have been worth recording in the fucking first place. Footage of a criminal, committing a crime. How novel.
The EFF logo for this story was perfect, "extremely fucking foolish" was the first thought that came to mind.
It's simple enough. This was a local police department in a small rural area, so they were held to the rules. If they were a national agency with an effectively unlimited budget, ties to major military-industrial corporations, and loads of political clout, the courts would have performed some mental gymnatics and invented a bullshit reason why that inconvenient Fourth Amendment doesn't really apply. Currently "anti-terrorism" is popular.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Do you let random people walk into your home any time of the day or night without knowing who they are?
If not, why should the United States?
Because a free market in labour is as important as a free market in goods.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The powers of the federal government are lusted in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution says:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts ...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
You might want to read that last part twice. Anything not explicitly allowed to the feds is reserved to the states and the people.
By 1819, Chief Justice Marshall said the meaning of that is so clear that McCulloch didn't need to spend time belaboring the point, everyone knows the feds can only do what they are specifically authorized to do. Marshall wrote:
"This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it, would seem too apparent, to have required to be enforced by all those arguments, which its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge; that principle is now universally admitted."
I think you are missing the point of the story. Nobody really gives a flying fuck whether this one guy happens to get deported or not, because he's no longer an interesting or important part of it. What happened is that the government Got Caught, yet again, doing illegal shit. Whoever they were investigating during the commissions of their own infractions, is irrelevant. It doesn't have anything to do with Latin-vs-other, or even presidents. It was a local PD that got caught acting like criminals. That's bad, because we want PDs to be fighting crime, not being the crime.
It will also continue as long as there is no real penalty for getting caught. If a cop breaks the rules in this manner, the worst that happens is the case gets thrown out and the defendant goes free. Start throwing these cops in state penitentiaries for a year or two, making sure they go in the general population and get no special treatment, and you will see an immediate and drastic decline in this kind of abuse. And why shouldn't we do this? Cops who engage in this behavior are violating the very highest law of the land. That should carry a penalty.
The way I see it, when a cop breaks the law it's much worse than when an ordinary citizen breaks the law, because the cop is entrusted with special powers and has sworn to uphold the law. It follows that cops should be punished much more harshly when they break the law than a citizen who does the same thing. There is no other way you're going to return to being a free nation.
Talk to old people sometime about what cops used to be like. They were once genuine public servants. If you had a problem, you could find a cop and he'd help you. Average people didn't fear the police the way they do now. That's what we should return to.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The Supreme Court does not interpret the constitution to be either completely restrictive of the Federal Government only to those powers and authorities granted to it by the Constitiution, nor is it completely free to do whatever it wants so long as it is not prohibited by the Constitution. An example is a federal bank. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the Feds can have a bank, or create the Federal Reserve (try to find authority for this in the Constitution). Early on in the republic, there was a big fight over this. Eventually the Supreme Court decided that anything that was necessary and proper to effect the powers granted to the feds by the Constitution was allowed. So, a federal bank was allowed, because that was considered necessary and proper for collecting taxes, and spending the revenues collected. Many of the States Rights folks specifically raised the ninth and tenth amendment arguements, but they did not win with the Supremes. But not just anything is allowed. My guess is that if the Feds decided to open Federal Liquor Stores or have a Federal Lottery that would get struck down in the courts for being unnecessary and/or improper to effect some federal power. States can do these things, but the Feds probably can't. So, the real situation is not so black and white as either post tries to make it.
Join the IParty!
Which has nothing to do with the question I asked.
No one is saying people from other countries shouldn't be allowed to work in the U.S. (I'm not), what is being asked is they do it legally and with proper documentation.
So again, I ask the question, do you let random people walk in and out of your place without knowing who they are?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Oh look at the poor persecuted "christian" that is so bent out of shape because his publicly funded school or courthouse doesn't have a monument to the 10 commandments. Paying 5 or 6 figures for a monument, as has happened in the past, is an endorsement.
Look, numbnuts, it's not "your" school or courthouse, it's our school and our courthouse, and "us" includes atheists, hindi, buddhists, jews, etc., as well as christians, or so-called "christians" that have completely forgotten the Sermon on the Mount.
--
BMO
Even though police did not have a warrant,
And that deserves a Darwin award. Seriously, couldn't they have gotten one in the first place? I seriously doubt, if they had well documented reasons to believe something was up, that they wouldn't have been able to find one.
This case was in the bag (or would have been in the bag), but authorities dropped the ball. I've been on jury duty, and I've seen this before. Cops drop the technical ball, and we in jury duty have to say "not guilty" even though we know deep in our guts that the guy on the stand did it.
It is annoying, but this is how the law is meant to operate in a civilized country. This just stresses the point that authorities need to do their shit better, all the time.