Slashdot Mirror
It's Entirely Reasonable For Police To Swipe a Suspicious Gift Card, Says Court (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Ars Technica: A U.S. federal appeals court has found that law enforcement can, without a warrant, swipe credit cards and gift cards to reveal the information encoded on the magnetic stripe. It's the third such federal appellate court to reach this conclusion. Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the government in United States v. Turner, establishing that it was entirely reasonable for Texas police officers to scan approximately 100 gift cards found in a car that was pulled over at a traffic stop. Like the previous similar 8th Circuit case that Ars covered in June 2016, the defendants challenged the search of the gift cards as being unreasonable. (The second case was from the 3rd Circuit in July 2015, in a case known as U.S. v. Bah.) In this case, after pulling over the car and running the IDs of both men, police found that there was an outstanding warrant for the passenger, Courtland Turner. When Turner was told to get out of the car and was placed in the patrol car, the officer returned to the stopped car and noticed an "opaque plastic bag partially protruding from the front passenger seat," as if someone had tried to push it under the seat to keep it hidden. The cop then asked the driver, Broderick Henderson, what was in the bag. Henderson replied that they had bought gift cards. When the officer then asked if he had receipts for them, Henderson replied that they had "bought the gift cards from another individual who sells them to make money." Turner's lawyers later challenged the scanning, arguing that this "search" of these gift cards went against their client's "reasonable expectation of privacy," an argument that neither the district court nor the appellate court found convincing. The 5th Circuit summarized: "After conferring with other officers about past experiences with stolen gift cards, the officer seized the gift cards as evidence of suspected criminal activity. Henderson was ticketed for failing to display a driver's license and signed an inventory sheet that had an entry for 143 gift cards. Turner was arrested pursuant to his warrant. The officer, without obtaining a search warrant, swiped the gift cards with his in-car computer. Unable to make use of the information shown, the officer turned the gift cards over to the Secret Service. A subsequent scan of the gift cards revealed that at least forty-three were altered, meaning the numbers encoded in the card did not match the numbers printed on the card. The investigating officer also contacted the stores where the gift cards were purchased -- a grocery store and a Walmart in Bryan, Texas provided photos of Henderson and Turner purchasing gift cards."
dumb criminal made the mistake of driving illegally with an outstanding warrant and had a bag of over 100 gift cards. nothing suspicious
Is it a crime to be in possession of credit cards / gift cards? (No)
Is the information contained in a credit card / gift card in plain view? (No).
Does a LEO, without a warrant or probable cause, have the legal authority to open a container to peruse it's contents? (No)
So why then can a LEO seize and search the contents of a CC / Gift Card without probable cause or a warrant, when they can't legally open closed (but unlocked) containers on a person's person and possession thereof are in-of-themselves perfectly legal?
This is yet another bad case precedent eroding the very core of the 4th Amendment. There isn't even an attempt to reconcile it with constitutional law.
That's one of my problems with the rules of evidence: the only penalty for unlawfully obtaining evidence is that the evidence is thrown out. That protects only the guilty, innocent people who's rights are violated have zero recourse! I thinks cops should be penalized for violating the rules, but if you got evidence of a crime, unless you have reason to suspect that the cops themselves planted the evidence, it should be admissible in court.
I disagree. I say that it protects the innocent also because the police have to think twice before they perform an unlawful search on anyone. While you may say that an innocent person is unlikely to be unlawfully searched, I say look at New York's Stop and Frisk policy. The only thing you have to do wrong in NYC to be unlawfully searched is to have the wrong skin color.
If cops are personally liable for illegal searches and got prosecuted and jailed, then they would be thinking twice themselves. As it is, they can even jail you on bogus charges without any repercussions - "you may beat the rap but you won't beat the ride". Unfortunately, cops are not even prosecuted for straight-up murder very often, so thinking that prosecutors would bring charges for illegal searches is just fantasy right now.
I get frisked at airports, its no big deal.
Because they consider you a criminal. You were presumed guilty until they found you innocent.
If you think this is acceptable then you wouldn't have a problem being frisked everywhere you go. Every restaurant, every movie theater, every store you want to enter, they frisk you because they're presuming you're a criminal.
Congratulations. You're another shining example of how the terrorists have won. They've made it so we fear everything and everyone.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Then you should be able to provide evidence (receipt) that you bought those branded gift cards from a website instead of telling the police you bought it off from someone else?
They should need to provide evidence that your gift cards were obtained illegally or were involved in the commission of a crime. You shouldn't need to prove your innocence to avoid being assumed guilty.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.