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When It Comes To Spy Gear, Many Police Ignore Public Records Laws
v3rgEz writes What should take precedence: State public records laws, or contractual agreements between local police, the FBI, and the privately owned Harris Corporation? That's the question being played out across the country, as agencies are strongly divided on releasing much information, if any, on how they're using Stingray technology to collect and monitor phone metadata without judicial oversight.
"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."
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Laws are for the little people.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
How does it feel? A lot of people love it. Particularly bootlicking authoritarians who stick up for the police no matter what. You see illogical, ignorant arguments like "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!", "The police have hard jobs, so you must forgive them!", "They should've complied, and then the police wouldn't have used excessive force against them! It's all their fault that the police chose to use an unnecessary amount of force!", "Safety is more important than everyone's freedoms or the constitution, so even if these sweeping powers lead to abuses, I'm all for it as long as they keep us safe.", "A grand majority of police are good guys! Ignore all the so-called 'good cops' who don't take steps to stop the bad ones, and even participate in unconstitutional and unethical activities."
The excuses are truly endless.
This is real life - not Law & Order. The prosecutor can do little if he alienates the police and feds. To that end his ambition will ALWAYS trump the law or his oath.
I work at a government agency and this is standard procedure for any request that potentially might embarrass the agency, or even be difficult to turn up. If you ignore a request somebody has to have the resources to sue you in order to force you to produce the requested documents, and even then there's no real penalty. Why not ignore by default?
The linked to article, written by the organization that's trying to get the records, is more fair than the Slashdot summary. If you read the actual article, you'll see that it's not a case of policy "ignoring public records laws". In a lot of the cases, the states are claiming that Stingray documents fall under the exceptions IN THE PUBLIC RECORDS LAWS. That's not "ignoring the law." If the requesting party appeals, they still have to convince a judge that that's the correct interpretation of the law. In the states where the documents don't potentially fall under such an exception, they still have a *contract* with the federal government that requires them to allow the federal government to exhaust their own legal options before releasing the data. The Contract Clause "No state shall .... pass any ... Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts" combined with the Supremacy Clause (which basically says that the constitution and federal laws made in accordance with it are the law of the land, "anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.") give the federal government a very good chance of preventing disclosure by taking the case to a federal court. The rule of law doesn't mean that the government doesn't have any powers or that all legal disputes are settled the way YOU want them to. Everything about this situation is a perfect example of the rule of law working exactly as it should. There's a disagreement, conflicting contracts and laws, and legal ambiguity, so the parties will have to GO TO COURT to sort it all out.
police support the creation and advancement of police states. Also in other news, water is wet.
Nothing to see here folks.
The issue is not with the police, which more often than not support doing away with any pesky human rights and oversight which make it "harder" for them to do their jobs, but with the cowardly sheeple who empower them by happily give up their freedom every time some they hear someone say boo.
Yes terrorism is horrible, but lots of other risks in life are much more deadly, including gun culture, obesity and processed foods industry, poverty, insufficient vaccination and medical treatment, etc. And yet very little is done to address these other issues since steeples don't consider them as scary.
Strange that we were able to defeat the Nazi horrors without having to resort to creating our own police states, in which every citizen is monitored and they activity permanently archived.