As far as I am aware, there is exactly 1 right which the constitution does not explicitly grant to minors. That is the right to vote. ALL OTHER CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS have been upheld (or never challenged) by the courts. Minors have the right to free speech. People do not suddenly gain the right to speak their minds on their 18th birthday.
More than one:
Minors do not have the right to jury trials except when being tried as an adult.
Minors do not have the right to possess firearms.
Minors cannot legally exercise ownership of property. The parent may be holding some item in trust for a minor, but that just means there's an obligation to the minor to be carried out at some point in the future.
Minors do not have the right to travel at will. Just ask the parents.
Minors only have limited rights to make medical decisions for themselves.
Minors may not always have the right to testify in court. The usual rule is that any competent person with relevant information can be a witness, but it's a lot easier to suppress a minor's testimony as incompetent.
Hell, haven't you ever even HEARD of status offenses? What are they teaching in US Civics classes these days?
Note for non-US and non-educated US readers: A status offense is an act that is perfectly legal when committed by an adult, but illegal when committed by a minor. Alcohol/tobacco possession, glue-sniffing, curfew violation, runaways, and firearms possession are all examples.
As an additional point there is no way a sane EMT or Police officer is going to drive only the speed limit if they are headed to a serious emergency call. Give these guys a little credit, you think fear of a 75$ ticket would stop them from doing their jobs correctly?
To you it's a $75 ticket. You don't have to face internal disciplinary action from your employer every time you get one. Our department routinely suspends people without pay, one day per point, when it finds out that our people got tickets. How much would you like to lose a week's income over a stoplight?
For what it's worth, there are self-appointed "community activists" who go wild every time they see a cruiser speeding, and try to file IA complaints on the driver. A few communities in Colorado experimented with an unofficial policy of obeying the speed limits, even when they had their lights and music going and would have been fully justifying in running code. If you want cops to haul ass to your calls, then don't complain when we speed to other peoples' calls too.
And it's hard to imagine a department that wouldn't know exactly who had which car when. My department has it easy. We're on a 1:1 car plan, which means that each sworn officer and about a third of our civilians have department-assigned cars which we take home at the end of our shifts. If someone has a gripe about a 99 Crown Vic, Colorado Government plate YEAH RIGHT, it's not too hard to find out that it's mine.
I doubt DC has a 1:1 plan-they're rare among major cities. Even so, they definitely keep a record of that. God help them if they don't and some civil plaintiff's attorney finds out.
I think that every time I were to receive a ticket for this from one of these cameras, I would contest it in court. There is no proof that you were driving the car at the time, so why should you receive points against your record for the crime, not to mention the cost of the ticket and the rise in your insurance costs?
First of all...I don't know about your jurisdiction, but here in Colorado, USA, points are not assessed on photo-radar citations.
Second, the citation is filed when (and only when) the sex of the driver in the photo matches the registered owner. And it's not hard to appear in XXX muni court on the given date to show the judge that you look nothing like the guy in the picture.
And third, if you don't like dealing with the system face-to-face, you're better off with a photo ticket. A real cop will check you for warrants (like from an unpaid ticket from last year), license validity (in case your license was revoked for DUI or some such, an instant trip to jail in most of this state), whether or not you have proof of insurance (no cop I know routinely gives breaks on that, and it's big enough that people can't pay it by mail), expired tags (because if I have to pay vehicle tax on my car, so does everyone else) and why does the inside of your car stink of beer and marijuana when you loaned it to your kid last night.
Not to mention: In the case of a speed camera, the same violation will carry anywhere from one to eight points if I cite you in person. It only takes twelve in one year to get suspended.
Personally, I'd rather use real cops too. We're frankly more of a deterrent.
It looks to me like he got the point but didn't buy it. Or maybe I'm optimistic, because I'm not buying it either.
Have you ever read the directions for microwave oven food preparation? You're usually given a range of time to cook the food and then a disclaimer telling you that microwave oven cooking times may vary. This is because ovens have different amount of power. A frozen dinner would tell the oven exactly how much energy it needs to be cooked properly and the oven would adjust its power accordingly.
Let me guess. The oven will automagically shut off when the popcorn kernels are popping 3-5 seconds apart.
Who knows, maybe people might even try *gasp* cooking! There's actually food that you can prepare in your own home that isn't a pizza or popcorn or Hot Pocket. And you don't always have to get your grease fix from the yellow pages.
At this point you're depending on the knowledge of one person. No matter how skilled a doctor is, there is no way she can know every lethal combination of prescribed medications. Doctors know the interactions of certain drugs, typically the ones they most commonly prescribe. Once you're prescribed a medication that isn't very common, you're putting your trust in the doctor's ability to look up the information properly in the reference books she has available.
..such as the Physicians Desk Reference, available in the reference section of every school or public library in the US that's worth mentioning. Not to mention, most pharmacists keep a copy on hand and will look up interactions for you if you ask.
Some people will let their household appliances do their thinking for them. Others will listen to atavistic songs like Hank Jr's "Country Boy Can Survive" (or actually being the people that Hank was singing about) and end up 0wning all the rest of you. "We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too. Ain't too many things these old boys can do. We can skin a buck, or run a trotline, because a country boy can survive."
Yes, of course it does. Every court decision is a precedent, and a legal ruling by a District court somewhere in Jersey needs to be taken into account by all other courts ruling on similar issues all across the country, up to and including the Supreme Court.
Yes and no.
A decision made by the Federal District Court for Northern California will be PERSUASIVE to a judge in New Jersey. However, the judge in Jersey isn't bound by it.
Similarly, let's say the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the decision by the judge in NorCal. Still persuasive outside of the Ninth Circuit, but still not binding.
And this is assuming that we're still talking about a question of Federal law. One state's law and the holdings of state judges are pretty much immaterial in other states. I doubt a judge in Kansas will really care about the fact that Colorado cops aren't allowed to draw blood for alcohol testing by force unless there's a fatality- or serious-injury-accident involved.
Judges don't get to go around ignoring other judges just because they're in a different judicial district. Law is supposed to be consistent, equally and evenly applied. Now, clearly if one state has a law that another state doesn't, that's one thing, but this is a ruling about the protection afforded by the First Amendment, so yes, this district court in California's ruling is certainly relevant in courts across the land.
AIUI, the decision was handed down by a STATE court. Out-of-state courts don't usually care, and especially when the rulings come from California. California judges have a bad habit of coming up with interpretations that don't survive Federal appellate review. Or the "giggle test."
Your rights depend greatly on your state. Colorado has a "make my day" law and lethal force is considered justified against any intruder, armed or unarmerd, if you felt threatened. Since "feeling threatened" is highly subjective, and is very different from knowing you were threatened because the intruder displayed a weapon and intent,
Wrong. See Colorado Revised Statute 18-1-704.5.
You are authorized to use any degree of force, including deadly force against an intruder who:
Has entered unlawfully (crucial, because it excludes people who entered lawfully and then failed to leave when you told them to);
with the intent to commit a crime against person or property therein (that means a crime, beyond the original trespass);
And the resident REASONABLY (key concept here: That basically takes away the subjectivity) believes that the intruder intends to use force against an occupant.
That's probably the most sweeping home-defense law in the US that's passed Constitutional muster. (As in, god help anybody who actually depends on the Texas statute about defending property at night to protect him from jail or lawsuit)
Is it technology that is available to the average joe? Not likely. To use it they would need a search warrant. Monitoring like that falls under the illegal search part of the constitution. Dosen't matter that it is a company doing the search, they still need the search warrent.
Wrong. This is a point of law that, so far, ONLY slashdotters and teenage shoplifters don't seem to understand.
The Fourth Amendment, like the rest of the US Constitution, is a restriction on the acts of the government. The acts of private persons are completely irrelevant. The Constitution only restricts the state and its agents.
In other words, the cable company's evidence may or may not be admissible in criminal acourt, depending upon whether they violated a "reasonable expectation of privacy" at the direction of police. However, there is no Constitutional violation present.
Its next to impossible to find a used copy of a cd that was just released say with in the last month. I don't want to wait a 6 months to a year to be able to buy a cd that I want.
Boo hoo hoo.
Remember K-Mart? They hired Rosie O'Donnell as their spokesdroid. Rosie really pissed off a LOT of gun owners. They started boycotting K-Mart to pressure the store to get rid of her.
It worked. We've pretty much driven K-Mart out of business.
Any campaign entitles some sacrifice. Activism requires more than acting like a bunch of spoiled college students who think protest marches are more fun than midterms. That means waiting for six months to buy a CD, paying more for ammo and fishing tackle because you have to go somewhere else, paying more for gasoline because you're boycotting Conoco over gas exploration in the Grand Staircase NM, et cetera.
But if your priorities center around "I want X and I want it NOW!" then I'm not sure what else to suggest, other than being realistic: If you're not helping, then you're not helping. Refusing to take and sacrifice for a position is a valid attitude, and there is such a thing as neutrality. Just don't expect to be respected as being part of the solution when you're not.
Scalia and Thomas are extremely conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents. They are likely to do very little to support one's right to privacy.
It helps to look at the decisions they've authored.
There was a case, Bond v. US, in which a Border Patrol agent was performing ID checks on a bus in Texas. The agent squeezed a piece of luggage and felt marijuana. The court had to decide whether or not the squeeze constituted a 'search' requiring probable cause or other legal justification. The Court ruled that it was, with Thomas concurring. The dissent (the idea being that a squeeze doesn't require justification) was written by Breyer with Scalia joining. Who appointed Breyer? (I THINK Breyer was a Clinton appointee, but I could be wrong)
There was another case, Knowles v. Iowa, in which an Iowa state statute was being challenged. With most misdemeanor (including traffic) violations in most states, an officer has the discretion as to whether to arrest a person or to issue a citation and release.
There's also a legal theory called the 'search incident to arrest.' That means that when an officer makes a lawful custodial arrest, the officer can contemporaneously search the arrestee and basically everything within the arrestee's immediate area, in order to prevent the arrestee from getting a weapon or destroying evidence.
Now, Iowa had a statute which stated that an officer could make a search, similar to the search incident to arrest, even if the officer was citing and releasing the violator. Predictably, this went to the Court. The Court ruled the Iowa statute unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, based on the fact that it was ridiculous to have searches incident to arrest without having arrests. I'm not sure, but either one or both of the two concurred with the majority.
Normal citizens are not given the powers of police to go undercover and such things. Even private detectives are not allowed to go undercover like police are.
And which law is it that says so? Hint: It doesn't exist Federally, and I can name at least one state that doesn't have it.
You ever watch the TV news consumer protection segments? A lot of them involved fake buys and hidden cameras, and a reporter (more likely an intern) who's almost as good at the undercover thing as my department's street drug team.
If its police action, the relevant question is whether or not you have a reasonable expectation of privacy (see Katz v. United States) in someone else's home. I'd say that depends on the wishes of the homeowner. If the taping is done by a private party, not acting on behalf of the state, then the Fourth Amendment is a non-issue. It does not restrict the activities of private persons acting in a private capacity.
I kind of found this headline a bit disturbing... I hate things like this because they really discourage any responsibilty... It reminds me of all those miracle diets; "Eat all the fatty foods you want and don't gain a pound." Seems like people today just don't want responsibility.
On the one hand, this argument looks like arguing against liver cancer research because it discourages drunks from taking responsibility.
And on the other hand, building magic CO2 suckers is like taking methamphetamine to deal with being overweight. A very few people might actually need it, and most need to master certain critical exercises like the "Table Pushaway."
(Was it meth or valium that was the Rolling Stones' "Mother's Little Helper, anyway?)
Of course reducing emissions need some sort of united effort *cough* kyoto *cough*..
Tell it to China. ISTR that Kyoto didn't bind them, and they have air-quality problems that make Gary, IN smell like an oxygen tent.
Re:The true question....
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e-Denounce
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Anyway, from the first time the term started being used, warez was always pronounced "wares", to rhyme with "bears".
That's not the important question. The important questions is, how do you pronounce 'w4r3z?'
I am fairly certain any national database would be more protected that you would ever be capable of, what right do you have to demand such things you can not even do yourself.
Then why is most of the US Department of the Interior disconnected from the internet by court order? (Hint: It wasn't as secure as they thought it was.)
The fourth amendment was to protect a persons privacy, and most of this information is not private. That which is, is already protected by law such as medical records.
Actually, the Fourth is clear and privacy isn't named in it. A person's records are what the word "papers" mean. And it takes more than just a whim to legally set up a pen register or get unlisted phone information from the phone company.
Our government does more for you in you a day than you will probably do for it and the rest of your country in a lifetime, they have a greater responsibility that you can possibly fathom and all of you need to grow up and try to contribute to our nations security instead of crying about it like spoiled children.
What have you done for our nation's security? How many of the major threats have you personally dealt with? How many drunk drivers have you taken off of the roads? How many child abusers and wife beaters have you locked up? How many weapons have you taken away from high school students?
And how many times have you been shot on behalf of our society? I'm willing to bet that I'm ahead of you on all of these. And Ellison's wet dream scares the hell out of me.
Re:War is a thing of the past..
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Space Wars
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True, but not quite what I was refering too, as bad as it may sound (at least too someone involved in any of those conflicts) all of those conflicts combined dont nearly compare to WWII,
There's probably a perspective issue there as well. Q: Which war was bloodiest for my country? A: Our civil war (or the War of Southern Treason as I personally see it), 1861-1865. Also, if you want, you can add up body counts. "Disappearances" in Peru and Argentina. The permanent civil war in Colombia, involving the US-supported government, communist guerillas, and cocaine wholesalers in a maze of shifting alliances that makes the mafia look straightforward. The rest of the problems in SE Asia during the Vietnam War era: Cambodia was a damn bloodbath, for instance. (If you've never watched the movie "The Killing Fields," you should. The rise of the Communists in China. The Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's (another surrogate war for the US and USSR, and involving weapons of mass destruction.) Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and the resulting massacres, ignored by the US government mainly because Indonesia was supposedly an ally against the USSR. (With friends like Suharto, who needs an enema?) The Cuban Missle Crisis, probably the scariest week in my father's life. He said it was worse than his year in Korea. And then, well, Korea, which was just nasty.
That's where this 'age of optimism' that I mentioned came from, the fact that the Cold war supprised everyone and didn't kill us all, was and is a very good reason to be optimistic.
Maybe. Remember back in the mid-1990's, where the US made some noises about mainland China not interfering with an election in the Republic of China? A Chinese official made a statement to the press about how they could nuke Los Angeles to make us shut up. That's even less comforting than some of our own elected officials, if such a thing be possible.
Of course we are far from absoluted peace and happyness, with no fear of terrorism or war, but compare our situation now to our ancestors living only 60 or 80 years ago..
Well, sixty years ago I'd probably have been drafted. Eighty years ago, the US was prosperous and most of Europe was still screwed from WWI. (If we hadn't let France dictate terms of the Treaty of Versailles, WWII in Europe would never have happened, but that's an off-topic argument for another day)...
Re:War is a thing of the past..
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Space Wars
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Wheather you agree that it's a good thing that the US is the last one standing (i have my reservations)
I'm just damn glad that it wasn't any of our competitors. New Zealander hegemony wouldn't be that offensive to me, but they were relatively inactive.
it is undoubtedly a good thing that the current situation came about through political change and revolution, not war.
Sure about that? Let's add up the body counts from Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan (the Soviet invasion specifically) and the various regional wars that ended up being almost all surrogates (Latin America and Africa were thick with these)
But a paradox exists, why then are so many countries dramatically _increasing_ defence budgets? America is by a _significant_ amount, down here in Australia we are again by a big amount again, at least by our standards.
You have neighbors. Some of them may or may not be very nice. China and India both have combinations of nuclear weapons and population pressure, for instance. And while India may be civilized about such things, the PRC makes me nervous.
All of this in such an age of optimism?
Who said optimism? Last year there was a mass fatality incident in New York, on a scale previously only caused by natural disasters or nation-states. I'm supposed to be on the "Front Lines" (if you believe the Fraternal Order of Police junkmail, even though I'm mostly on the front lines of vandalism, underage drinking, and spousal abuse enforcement lately). And I'm not sleeping a whole hell of a lot better. Neither are our fire/EMS department.
Australia hasn't really done much to piss anyone off lately, and especially not the deranged folks who think themselves divinely ordained to kill people. Here on the other side of the Pacific, we're considered by some to be stooges of the International Zionist Conspiracy because we haven't actually nuked Israel off of the map yet. And that "some" has had a disturbing habit of killing Americans (and people who look vaguely like Americans). And that's very much on our map here.
To empahasis my previous post now (the subject), think about it all you westerners (like me), could you even stomach a world war? What _possible_ reason could that be tolerated by the people of the world? Lets assume for a moment democracy works. (which i think it does)
I'm having a hard time visualizing one in the next decade. If there's a major nation-state threat, it's mainland China, but they know what'll happen if they step too far over the edge, and it'll be worse than our not selling them Boeing aircraft anymore.
It really makes you wonder.. Perhaps we are un-learning some things, important things, like how to contain regional conflicts, (think middle east), perhaps some things we never learnt..
Can it be done? In the Middle East, you have several problems. One problem won't be settled until either every Jew or most of the Muslims are dead, unless there's some breakthrough that I'm not seeing. (Well, I do have the answer. Yassir Arafat and Ariel Sharon need to quit being shitheads, but I'm not holding my breath). One problem would require that certain heads of state give up on expansionism. (Or cease breathing, which might be more helpful altogether). And then there's the issue of very-traditional societies having conflicts with the modern world. That's not limited to the ME, and we don't really have an answer to the conflict it causes here in the US either.
ps. Yes i know money is needed to fight new forms of terrorism, and as this topic is about space war, etc, but with 10 gazzilion dollars worth of space weapons, does the US really need a 400,000 (or whatever) man army??
Ever read Heinlein's Starship Troopers? (Yes, the book. Not the movie. The movie sucked ass and Paul Verhoeven should be deported and penetrated to death by feral donkeys for making that crap). Anyway, one character made an interesting point: Anybody can nuke a target. But all you've done is kill a lot of people and made a mess. You don't control it until you can stand a 19-year-old kid with a rifle on it. If you can't control it, you can't pacify it. And if you can't pacify it, then you'll have another one of those conflicts that stretches out for decades and kills a lot of people (like Yugoslavia) and that even an absolute dictator with a powerful secret police (like Tito) can only control for a few years. Those peacemaking missions need a lot of manpower.
Also, consider: There are more deer hunters in the state of Pennsylvania than there are infantrymen in the US Army. Most of those hundreds of thousands are support personnel rather than line soldiers.
If I'm not mistaken the federal "Do Not Call" list is still a proposal. Plenty of state-level ones, though; I'm looking at the one for Florida right now.
The Federal Trade Commission has kicked around the idea. It's basically a proposal of a proposal at this point.
However, each telemarketer is required by law to maintain a "do not call" list and to immediately add any number to it at the owner's request. If a teledirtbag calls you after you've asked to be added to the list, you have a civil claim against them. The damages are fixed by statute at $500/violation, or up to $1500 for "knowing" violations, and are recoverable in small-claims court.
If that's an issue for you, I'd suggest just going to your county/circuit/whatever-your-state-
calls-it court and ask about the small-claims filing procedures. Here in Colorado, I'd ask at your county court. In some states, small-claims courts are run by the state's Consumer Affairs office. I think California is one of the latter.
I think there was a special exception for them. It was probably the FOP, which I believe might be a not for profit organization? Anyone know for sure?
I don't know about Indiana specifically, but most such lists exempt not-for-profit orgs.
Yes, FOP is a not-for-profit. Some of their state lodges aggressively telemarket for specific charitable programs, others don't. I couldn't tell you what the Colorado lodges are doing.
It might also have been a different professional organization. I'm willing to bet that IN has a handful of state organizations besides FOP.
I doubt it was a department, though. Government agencies aren't generally allowed to accept donations, never mind solicit them.
FWIW, we had this problem here in CO a few years ago, where some of the police professional organizations got involved with telemarketers. As it happened, the teledirtbags were pocketing about 90% of the donations to cover their "marketing costs." That's common enough that I never donate money to any charity that cold-calls me anymore.
Aside from it being illegal most places in the United States.
Not quite true.
The Federal law is one-party. That means that a call can be recorded at the consent of any one party. Most of the states are also one-party, including my home state of Colorado.
Check your own state law to be sure, but you're usually pretty safe taping incoming calls.
If this is indeed the case, then what is the fuss about? Can not the police search your house and gain access to your records if they have obtained a warrant?
It's not quite the case. It was a subpoena, not a warrant.
A warrant is a document commanding police to search a given place and seize certain items found therein. A subpoena is a document on the court's authority commanding a person or entity to turn over certain documents to the court. It doesn't typically involve having cops go and search premises for those items.
When I serve a search warrant, I'm working under certain rules. Basically, if a person refuses to open a door after I've knocked and announced and waited the reasonable time required by law, then we knock the door down. If a person refuses to unlock a container that could contain the items named in the warrant, we break it open. If the person obstructs us, we arrest him for obstructing a peace officer.
If they're served with a subpoena and have some reason for not complying, they can try to have the subpoena quashed by the court-IIRC, this is what the bookstore did. Or they can refuse to comply without actually doing it the way the law requires, and that opens the door to contempt proceedings. But subpoenas can be quashed by a court, since the time factor common with warrants usually doesn't exist with subpoenas. They're not generally for evidence which will decay over time or be destroyed by a guilty party if not seized.
So, basically the Officer was a dope who tried to do an end-run around the law. Oops!
Or perhaps he was a hardened street cop who played by his own rules.
I've got another idea.
A lot of DA's offices here in Colorado will not help an officer get a warrant when the premises to be searched are outside of that judicial district. Our own, for instance, will often look at our affidavits and say "Nice warrant, but it's not in XXX county. Go speak to their DA's office instead."
When a cop goes to a different DA, that's not an end run. An end run around the law would typically involve either perjury or not bothering to get a warrant at all before seizing. To search premises in the City and County of Denver, speak to a Denver DA and a Denver judge. It seems like common sense to me. However, I'm a cop, which means I know less about policing than the average slashdotter.
The USSC can only rule on state constitutional questions when the question is whether the state constitution violates the Federal Constitution. For example, the USSC will not touch a question of whether the Colorado Constitution shielded the bookstore's records or not.
Where a state constitutional provision violates some Federal Constitutional provision, then the USSC will invalidate it. An example is Amendment Two a few years ago. It passed by referendum and forbade local governments from including sexual preference in anti-discrimination codes. That caused an uproar and a bunch of celebrities announced that they were boycotting Colorado because of it. The USSC trashed the amendment as being inconsistent with the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection) to the Federal Constitution.
My own feelings were mixed. On the one hand, anything that keeps celebrities (and especially Baldwins) out of Colorado can't be all bad. On the other hand, I've opposed every single amendment to the state constitution that didn't come from Douglas Bruce.
Which is worse the a-hole who (ab)uses the system or the a-holes who set up a system so it can easily be abused ?
Which is worse, the civil court system that can be abused, or the civil court system to which ordinary people aren't allowed access at all?
I mean it. If Joe Blow isn't allowed to file pro se when he feels he's been wronged, that doesn't just mean that frivolous libel suits will go away. That means that he'll have no recourse when his insurance company screws him. That means he'll have no option when his Frod Exploder SUV with Fireball Tires flips over and leaves him with a zillion bucks in medical bills. Or when someone announces to half the population of the small town in which he lives that he likes to feed methamphetamine to small children and then have carnal relations with them.
hah! We're Canadian! Such frivolous lawsuits would never occur in our great nation!
No. The defendants would just be jailed for hate speech instead.
Re:September 11th used to justify everything.
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For what it's worth, you actually DO have a right to privacy in your own home, even with the blinds open. Check up on peeping tom laws sometime.
Not quite. The relevant case law is contained mainly in the landmark case Katz vs. United States. In it, the Nine Old Farts of the Potomac said that trespass is not a relevant issue in Fourth Amendment law. Rather, the relevant question is whether or not a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in a certain place or item. (Remember the words in quotes: They're at the very heart of all search and seizure law in the US)
So, do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your own living room? That depends. Can the inside of your house be seen from the outside?
Remember, a cop can legally act on anything he sees, so long as he is in a place in which he is legally able to be when he sees it. And he can use binoculars, if he can demonstrate to the court that he would have been able to see what he saw from a closer position which he has a legal right to be in, and used the binoculars only to avoid detection.
Where it gets interesting is when you deal with new surveillance technology. "Extraordinary technical means" typically are closer to being a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant or other justification. There was a case a year or so ago in which an indoor marijuana grow was located using a thermal imager, and the images (and the search that followed) were suppressed, since the use of TI technology was a "search" within the meaning of the amendment.
In the specific case here...legally, any person with legal custody of a record is allowed to hand it over to police. If Earthlink violates their own privacy policy and decides to make nice with the FBI, you probably (IANAL) have a civil claim against them. However, whatever they gave the Feebs will probably be admissible in criminal court.
Also, Carnivore, as I understand it, can be used two ways. Either it can give the full content of email, or it can merely report the headers. The latter setting is basically analogous to a "mail cover," in which the information on the outside of a First-Class envelope is recorded. As of yet, there is no Federal case law on whether a mail cover constitutes a search requiring legal justification. My own guess is that the USSC will rule that it isn't, but it'll be a close decision. An email cover would be a lot like a pen register, which the USSC also doesn't consider to be a search requiring warrant.
Also, bear one other thing in mind: In mail that enters the United States from abroad, there is no legal bar to it being opened and inspected. That's for customs purposes, mostly, and I don't know if that reasoning will be extended to email or not. This is a new enough area of case law that there's still a lot of fumbling. Never mind our dual-sovereignty system here in the US, which makes things more complicated. Pen registers ARE considered to be searches by Colorado state courts, and I'm guessing that they'll do the same with mail covers. Likewise, the Federal courts have said that anybody with legal access to records can turn them over to police and have them be admissible, but the Colorado courts have said otherwise, but were a little vague about it.
So, if any of our overseas brethren are not yet thoroughly confused, follow up to this and I'll give a discourse on Colorado forfeiture law;-)
I lived in London for most of 2001 (Detroit born and raised). People overseas couldn't understand how most Americans could go their entire lives and never have a passport, or never leave the country (except Canada or Mexico).
I actually had the same thing asked of me.
Looking at this map, it's about four hundred road miles and one state line (and two gas-and-caffeine stops, and maybe a meal, and maybe even an hour to wet a line in that stream if I have the time to spare...) from Pudhuff, Kansas, where I was born, to Rathole, Colorado, where I live now. It doesn't feel all that long. Six or eight hours on the road. And ISTR that four hundred road miles can take you from the UK almost all the way to Germany.
In other words, from my eighteenth birthday to my thirty-somethingth later this year, I've moved a distance equivalent to two COUNTRIES away.
I shot a deer last year in a National Forest, a swath of public land that alone is larger than some European countries. And it's certainly not the largest piece of land under USFS control. (side question: Does western Europe even have open public land on that scale, millions of acres/hectares?)
That's something that a lot of Europeans don't seem to get about the US: This place is HUGE! It's thirty and snowing outside my place of gainful unemployment today. At my parents' place, it's about sixty and sunny. And to look at a map, you'd think Rathole and Pudhuff weren't THAT far apart. Certainly closer than our state capital (Denver) and the next one over (Topeka, Kansas, 550 road miles) or our state capital and the national capitol (I'm guessing 2000 miles plus). Hell, this state's land surface probably isn't that far from the surface area of France, and there's another forty-nine states besides us.
Slashdot Mirror
More than one:
Minors do not have the right to jury trials except when being tried as an adult.
Minors do not have the right to possess firearms.
Minors cannot legally exercise ownership of property. The parent may be holding some item in trust for a minor, but that just means there's an obligation to the minor to be carried out at some point in the future.
Minors do not have the right to travel at will. Just ask the parents.
Minors only have limited rights to make medical decisions for themselves.
Minors may not always have the right to testify in court. The usual rule is that any competent person with relevant information can be a witness, but it's a lot easier to suppress a minor's testimony as incompetent.
Hell, haven't you ever even HEARD of status offenses? What are they teaching in US Civics classes these days?
Note for non-US and non-educated US readers: A status offense is an act that is perfectly legal when committed by an adult, but illegal when committed by a minor. Alcohol/tobacco possession, glue-sniffing, curfew violation, runaways, and firearms possession are all examples.
To you it's a $75 ticket. You don't have to face internal disciplinary action from your employer every time you get one. Our department routinely suspends people without pay, one day per point, when it finds out that our people got tickets. How much would you like to lose a week's income over a stoplight?
For what it's worth, there are self-appointed "community activists" who go wild every time they see a cruiser speeding, and try to file IA complaints on the driver. A few communities in Colorado experimented with an unofficial policy of obeying the speed limits, even when they had their lights and music going and would have been fully justifying in running code. If you want cops to haul ass to your calls, then don't complain when we speed to other peoples' calls too.
And it's hard to imagine a department that wouldn't know exactly who had which car when. My department has it easy. We're on a 1:1 car plan, which means that each sworn officer and about a third of our civilians have department-assigned cars which we take home at the end of our shifts. If someone has a gripe about a 99 Crown Vic, Colorado Government plate YEAH RIGHT, it's not too hard to find out that it's mine.
I doubt DC has a 1:1 plan-they're rare among major cities. Even so, they definitely keep a record of that. God help them if they don't and some civil plaintiff's attorney finds out.
First of all...I don't know about your jurisdiction, but here in Colorado, USA, points are not assessed on photo-radar citations.
Second, the citation is filed when (and only when) the sex of the driver in the photo matches the registered owner. And it's not hard to appear in XXX muni court on the given date to show the judge that you look nothing like the guy in the picture.
And third, if you don't like dealing with the system face-to-face, you're better off with a photo ticket. A real cop will check you for warrants (like from an unpaid ticket from last year), license validity (in case your license was revoked for DUI or some such, an instant trip to jail in most of this state), whether or not you have proof of insurance (no cop I know routinely gives breaks on that, and it's big enough that people can't pay it by mail), expired tags (because if I have to pay vehicle tax on my car, so does everyone else) and why does the inside of your car stink of beer and marijuana when you loaned it to your kid last night.
Not to mention: In the case of a speed camera, the same violation will carry anywhere from one to eight points if I cite you in person. It only takes twelve in one year to get suspended.
Personally, I'd rather use real cops too. We're frankly more of a deterrent.
It looks to me like he got the point but didn't buy it. Or maybe I'm optimistic, because I'm not buying it either.
Have you ever read the directions for microwave oven food preparation? You're usually given a range of time to cook the food and then a disclaimer telling you that microwave oven cooking times may vary. This is because ovens have different amount of power. A frozen dinner would tell the oven exactly how much energy it needs to be cooked properly and the oven would adjust its power accordingly.
Let me guess. The oven will automagically shut off when the popcorn kernels are popping 3-5 seconds apart.
Who knows, maybe people might even try *gasp* cooking! There's actually food that you can prepare in your own home that isn't a pizza or popcorn or Hot Pocket. And you don't always have to get your grease fix from the yellow pages.
At this point you're depending on the knowledge of one person. No matter how skilled a doctor is, there is no way she can know every lethal combination of prescribed medications. Doctors know the interactions of certain drugs, typically the ones they most commonly prescribe. Once you're prescribed a medication that isn't very common, you're putting your trust in the doctor's ability to look up the information properly in the reference books she has available.
Some people will let their household appliances do their thinking for them. Others will listen to atavistic songs like Hank Jr's "Country Boy Can Survive" (or actually being the people that Hank was singing about) and end up 0wning all the rest of you. "We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too. Ain't too many things these old boys can do. We can skin a buck, or run a trotline, because a country boy can survive."
Yes and no.
A decision made by the Federal District Court for Northern California will be PERSUASIVE to a judge in New Jersey. However, the judge in Jersey isn't bound by it.
Similarly, let's say the Ninth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the decision by the judge in NorCal. Still persuasive outside of the Ninth Circuit, but still not binding.
And this is assuming that we're still talking about a question of Federal law. One state's law and the holdings of state judges are pretty much immaterial in other states. I doubt a judge in Kansas will really care about the fact that Colorado cops aren't allowed to draw blood for alcohol testing by force unless there's a fatality- or serious-injury-accident involved.
Judges don't get to go around ignoring other judges just because they're in a different judicial district. Law is supposed to be consistent, equally and evenly applied. Now, clearly if one state has a law that another state doesn't, that's one thing, but this is a ruling about the protection afforded by the First Amendment, so yes, this district court in California's ruling is certainly relevant in courts across the land.
Relevant, probably. Persuasive, maybe. Binding, absolutely not.
AIUI, the decision was handed down by a STATE court. Out-of-state courts don't usually care, and especially when the rulings come from California. California judges have a bad habit of coming up with interpretations that don't survive Federal appellate review. Or the "giggle test."
Wrong. See Colorado Revised Statute 18-1-704.5.
You are authorized to use any degree of force, including deadly force against an intruder who:
Has entered unlawfully (crucial, because it excludes people who entered lawfully and then failed to leave when you told them to);
with the intent to commit a crime against person or property therein (that means a crime, beyond the original trespass);
And the resident REASONABLY (key concept here: That basically takes away the subjectivity) believes that the intruder intends to use force against an occupant.
That's probably the most sweeping home-defense law in the US that's passed Constitutional muster. (As in, god help anybody who actually depends on the Texas statute about defending property at night to protect him from jail or lawsuit)
Wrong. This is a point of law that, so far, ONLY slashdotters and teenage shoplifters don't seem to understand.
The Fourth Amendment, like the rest of the US Constitution, is a restriction on the acts of the government. The acts of private persons are completely irrelevant. The Constitution only restricts the state and its agents.
In other words, the cable company's evidence may or may not be admissible in criminal acourt, depending upon whether they violated a "reasonable expectation of privacy" at the direction of police. However, there is no Constitutional violation present.
Boo hoo hoo.
Remember K-Mart? They hired Rosie O'Donnell as their spokesdroid. Rosie really pissed off a LOT of gun owners. They started boycotting K-Mart to pressure the store to get rid of her.
It worked. We've pretty much driven K-Mart out of business.
Any campaign entitles some sacrifice. Activism requires more than acting like a bunch of spoiled college students who think protest marches are more fun than midterms. That means waiting for six months to buy a CD, paying more for ammo and fishing tackle because you have to go somewhere else, paying more for gasoline because you're boycotting Conoco over gas exploration in the Grand Staircase NM, et cetera.
But if your priorities center around "I want X and I want it NOW!" then I'm not sure what else to suggest, other than being realistic: If you're not helping, then you're not helping. Refusing to take and sacrifice for a position is a valid attitude, and there is such a thing as neutrality. Just don't expect to be respected as being part of the solution when you're not.
It helps to look at the decisions they've authored.
There was a case, Bond v. US, in which a Border Patrol agent was performing ID checks on a bus in Texas. The agent squeezed a piece of luggage and felt marijuana. The court had to decide whether or not the squeeze constituted a 'search' requiring probable cause or other legal justification. The Court ruled that it was, with Thomas concurring. The dissent (the idea being that a squeeze doesn't require justification) was written by Breyer with Scalia joining. Who appointed Breyer? (I THINK Breyer was a Clinton appointee, but I could be wrong)
There was another case, Knowles v. Iowa, in which an Iowa state statute was being challenged. With most misdemeanor (including traffic) violations in most states, an officer has the discretion as to whether to arrest a person or to issue a citation and release.
There's also a legal theory called the 'search incident to arrest.' That means that when an officer makes a lawful custodial arrest, the officer can contemporaneously search the arrestee and basically everything within the arrestee's immediate area, in order to prevent the arrestee from getting a weapon or destroying evidence.
Now, Iowa had a statute which stated that an officer could make a search, similar to the search incident to arrest, even if the officer was citing and releasing the violator. Predictably, this went to the Court. The Court ruled the Iowa statute unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, based on the fact that it was ridiculous to have searches incident to arrest without having arrests. I'm not sure, but either one or both of the two concurred with the majority.
And which law is it that says so? Hint: It doesn't exist Federally, and I can name at least one state that doesn't have it.
You ever watch the TV news consumer protection segments? A lot of them involved fake buys and hidden cameras, and a reporter (more likely an intern) who's almost as good at the undercover thing as my department's street drug team.
If its police action, the relevant question is whether or not you have a reasonable expectation of privacy (see Katz v. United States) in someone else's home. I'd say that depends on the wishes of the homeowner. If the taping is done by a private party, not acting on behalf of the state, then the Fourth Amendment is a non-issue. It does not restrict the activities of private persons acting in a private capacity.
On the one hand, this argument looks like arguing against liver cancer research because it discourages drunks from taking responsibility.
And on the other hand, building magic CO2 suckers is like taking methamphetamine to deal with being overweight. A very few people might actually need it, and most need to master certain critical exercises like the "Table Pushaway."
(Was it meth or valium that was the Rolling Stones' "Mother's Little Helper, anyway?)
Of course reducing emissions need some sort of united effort *cough* kyoto *cough*..
Tell it to China. ISTR that Kyoto didn't bind them, and they have air-quality problems that make Gary, IN smell like an oxygen tent.
That's not the important question. The important questions is, how do you pronounce 'w4r3z?'
Then why is most of the US Department of the Interior disconnected from the internet by court order? (Hint: It wasn't as secure as they thought it was.)
The fourth amendment was to protect a persons privacy, and most of this information is not private. That which is, is already protected by law such as medical records.
Actually, the Fourth is clear and privacy isn't named in it. A person's records are what the word "papers" mean. And it takes more than just a whim to legally set up a pen register or get unlisted phone information from the phone company.
Our government does more for you in you a day than you will probably do for it and the rest of your country in a lifetime, they have a greater responsibility that you can possibly fathom and all of you need to grow up and try to contribute to our nations security instead of crying about it like spoiled children.
What have you done for our nation's security? How many of the major threats have you personally dealt with? How many drunk drivers have you taken off of the roads? How many child abusers and wife beaters have you locked up? How many weapons have you taken away from high school students?
And how many times have you been shot on behalf of our society? I'm willing to bet that I'm ahead of you on all of these. And Ellison's wet dream scares the hell out of me.
There's probably a perspective issue there as well. Q: Which war was bloodiest for my country? A: Our civil war (or the War of Southern Treason as I personally see it), 1861-1865. Also, if you want, you can add up body counts. "Disappearances" in Peru and Argentina. The permanent civil war in Colombia, involving the US-supported government, communist guerillas, and cocaine wholesalers in a maze of shifting alliances that makes the mafia look straightforward. The rest of the problems in SE Asia during the Vietnam War era: Cambodia was a damn bloodbath, for instance. (If you've never watched the movie "The Killing Fields," you should. The rise of the Communists in China. The Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's (another surrogate war for the US and USSR, and involving weapons of mass destruction.) Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and the resulting massacres, ignored by the US government mainly because Indonesia was supposedly an ally against the USSR. (With friends like Suharto, who needs an enema?) The Cuban Missle Crisis, probably the scariest week in my father's life. He said it was worse than his year in Korea. And then, well, Korea, which was just nasty.
That's where this 'age of optimism' that I mentioned came from, the fact that the Cold war supprised everyone and didn't kill us all, was and is a very good reason to be optimistic.
Maybe. Remember back in the mid-1990's, where the US made some noises about mainland China not interfering with an election in the Republic of China? A Chinese official made a statement to the press about how they could nuke Los Angeles to make us shut up. That's even less comforting than some of our own elected officials, if such a thing be possible.
Of course we are far from absoluted peace and happyness, with no fear of terrorism or war, but compare our situation now to our ancestors living only 60 or 80 years ago..
Well, sixty years ago I'd probably have been drafted. Eighty years ago, the US was prosperous and most of Europe was still screwed from WWI. (If we hadn't let France dictate terms of the Treaty of Versailles, WWII in Europe would never have happened, but that's an off-topic argument for another day)...
I'm just damn glad that it wasn't any of our competitors. New Zealander hegemony wouldn't be that offensive to me, but they were relatively inactive.
it is undoubtedly a good thing that the current situation came about through political change and revolution, not war.
Sure about that? Let's add up the body counts from Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan (the Soviet invasion specifically) and the various regional wars that ended up being almost all surrogates (Latin America and Africa were thick with these)
But a paradox exists, why then are so many countries dramatically _increasing_ defence budgets? America is by a _significant_ amount, down here in Australia we are again by a big amount again, at least by our standards.
You have neighbors. Some of them may or may not be very nice. China and India both have combinations of nuclear weapons and population pressure, for instance. And while India may be civilized about such things, the PRC makes me nervous.
All of this in such an age of optimism?
Who said optimism? Last year there was a mass fatality incident in New York, on a scale previously only caused by natural disasters or nation-states. I'm supposed to be on the "Front Lines" (if you believe the Fraternal Order of Police junkmail, even though I'm mostly on the front lines of vandalism, underage drinking, and spousal abuse enforcement lately). And I'm not sleeping a whole hell of a lot better. Neither are our fire/EMS department.
Australia hasn't really done much to piss anyone off lately, and especially not the deranged folks who think themselves divinely ordained to kill people. Here on the other side of the Pacific, we're considered by some to be stooges of the International Zionist Conspiracy because we haven't actually nuked Israel off of the map yet. And that "some" has had a disturbing habit of killing Americans (and people who look vaguely like Americans). And that's very much on our map here.
To empahasis my previous post now (the subject), think about it all you westerners (like me), could you even stomach a world war? What _possible_ reason could that be tolerated by the people of the world? Lets assume for a moment democracy works. (which i think it does)
I'm having a hard time visualizing one in the next decade. If there's a major nation-state threat, it's mainland China, but they know what'll happen if they step too far over the edge, and it'll be worse than our not selling them Boeing aircraft anymore.
It really makes you wonder.. Perhaps we are un-learning some things, important things, like how to contain regional conflicts, (think middle east), perhaps some things we never learnt..
Can it be done? In the Middle East, you have several problems. One problem won't be settled until either every Jew or most of the Muslims are dead, unless there's some breakthrough that I'm not seeing. (Well, I do have the answer. Yassir Arafat and Ariel Sharon need to quit being shitheads, but I'm not holding my breath). One problem would require that certain heads of state give up on expansionism. (Or cease breathing, which might be more helpful altogether). And then there's the issue of very-traditional societies having conflicts with the modern world. That's not limited to the ME, and we don't really have an answer to the conflict it causes here in the US either.
ps. Yes i know money is needed to fight new forms of terrorism, and as this topic is about space war, etc, but with 10 gazzilion dollars worth of space weapons, does the US really need a 400,000 (or whatever) man army??
Ever read Heinlein's Starship Troopers? (Yes, the book. Not the movie. The movie sucked ass and Paul Verhoeven should be deported and penetrated to death by feral donkeys for making that crap). Anyway, one character made an interesting point: Anybody can nuke a target. But all you've done is kill a lot of people and made a mess. You don't control it until you can stand a 19-year-old kid with a rifle on it. If you can't control it, you can't pacify it. And if you can't pacify it, then you'll have another one of those conflicts that stretches out for decades and kills a lot of people (like Yugoslavia) and that even an absolute dictator with a powerful secret police (like Tito) can only control for a few years. Those peacemaking missions need a lot of manpower.
Also, consider: There are more deer hunters in the state of Pennsylvania than there are infantrymen in the US Army. Most of those hundreds of thousands are support personnel rather than line soldiers.
The Federal Trade Commission has kicked around the idea. It's basically a proposal of a proposal at this point.
However, each telemarketer is required by law to maintain a "do not call" list and to immediately add any number to it at the owner's request. If a teledirtbag calls you after you've asked to be added to the list, you have a civil claim against them. The damages are fixed by statute at $500/violation, or up to $1500 for "knowing" violations, and are recoverable in small-claims court.
If that's an issue for you, I'd suggest just going to your county/circuit/whatever-your-state- calls-it court and ask about the small-claims filing procedures. Here in Colorado, I'd ask at your county court. In some states, small-claims courts are run by the state's Consumer Affairs office. I think California is one of the latter.
I don't know about Indiana specifically, but most such lists exempt not-for-profit orgs.
Yes, FOP is a not-for-profit. Some of their state lodges aggressively telemarket for specific charitable programs, others don't. I couldn't tell you what the Colorado lodges are doing.
It might also have been a different professional organization. I'm willing to bet that IN has a handful of state organizations besides FOP.
I doubt it was a department, though. Government agencies aren't generally allowed to accept donations, never mind solicit them.
FWIW, we had this problem here in CO a few years ago, where some of the police professional organizations got involved with telemarketers. As it happened, the teledirtbags were pocketing about 90% of the donations to cover their "marketing costs." That's common enough that I never donate money to any charity that cold-calls me anymore.
Not quite true.
The Federal law is one-party. That means that a call can be recorded at the consent of any one party. Most of the states are also one-party, including my home state of Colorado.
Check your own state law to be sure, but you're usually pretty safe taping incoming calls.
It's not quite the case. It was a subpoena, not a warrant.
A warrant is a document commanding police to search a given place and seize certain items found therein. A subpoena is a document on the court's authority commanding a person or entity to turn over certain documents to the court. It doesn't typically involve having cops go and search premises for those items.
When I serve a search warrant, I'm working under certain rules. Basically, if a person refuses to open a door after I've knocked and announced and waited the reasonable time required by law, then we knock the door down. If a person refuses to unlock a container that could contain the items named in the warrant, we break it open. If the person obstructs us, we arrest him for obstructing a peace officer.
If they're served with a subpoena and have some reason for not complying, they can try to have the subpoena quashed by the court-IIRC, this is what the bookstore did. Or they can refuse to comply without actually doing it the way the law requires, and that opens the door to contempt proceedings. But subpoenas can be quashed by a court, since the time factor common with warrants usually doesn't exist with subpoenas. They're not generally for evidence which will decay over time or be destroyed by a guilty party if not seized.
Or perhaps he was a hardened street cop who played by his own rules.
I've got another idea.
A lot of DA's offices here in Colorado will not help an officer get a warrant when the premises to be searched are outside of that judicial district. Our own, for instance, will often look at our affidavits and say "Nice warrant, but it's not in XXX county. Go speak to their DA's office instead."
When a cop goes to a different DA, that's not an end run. An end run around the law would typically involve either perjury or not bothering to get a warrant at all before seizing. To search premises in the City and County of Denver, speak to a Denver DA and a Denver judge. It seems like common sense to me. However, I'm a cop, which means I know less about policing than the average slashdotter.
The USSC can only rule on state constitutional questions when the question is whether the state constitution violates the Federal Constitution. For example, the USSC will not touch a question of whether the Colorado Constitution shielded the bookstore's records or not.
Where a state constitutional provision violates some Federal Constitutional provision, then the USSC will invalidate it. An example is Amendment Two a few years ago. It passed by referendum and forbade local governments from including sexual preference in anti-discrimination codes. That caused an uproar and a bunch of celebrities announced that they were boycotting Colorado because of it. The USSC trashed the amendment as being inconsistent with the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection) to the Federal Constitution.
My own feelings were mixed. On the one hand, anything that keeps celebrities (and especially Baldwins) out of Colorado can't be all bad. On the other hand, I've opposed every single amendment to the state constitution that didn't come from Douglas Bruce.
Which is worse, the civil court system that can be abused, or the civil court system to which ordinary people aren't allowed access at all?
I mean it. If Joe Blow isn't allowed to file pro se when he feels he's been wronged, that doesn't just mean that frivolous libel suits will go away. That means that he'll have no recourse when his insurance company screws him. That means he'll have no option when his Frod Exploder SUV with Fireball Tires flips over and leaves him with a zillion bucks in medical bills. Or when someone announces to half the population of the small town in which he lives that he likes to feed methamphetamine to small children and then have carnal relations with them.
No. The defendants would just be jailed for hate speech instead.
Not quite. The relevant case law is contained mainly in the landmark case Katz vs. United States. In it, the Nine Old Farts of the Potomac said that trespass is not a relevant issue in Fourth Amendment law. Rather, the relevant question is whether or not a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in a certain place or item. (Remember the words in quotes: They're at the very heart of all search and seizure law in the US)
So, do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your own living room? That depends. Can the inside of your house be seen from the outside?
Remember, a cop can legally act on anything he sees, so long as he is in a place in which he is legally able to be when he sees it. And he can use binoculars, if he can demonstrate to the court that he would have been able to see what he saw from a closer position which he has a legal right to be in, and used the binoculars only to avoid detection.
Where it gets interesting is when you deal with new surveillance technology. "Extraordinary technical means" typically are closer to being a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, requiring a warrant or other justification. There was a case a year or so ago in which an indoor marijuana grow was located using a thermal imager, and the images (and the search that followed) were suppressed, since the use of TI technology was a "search" within the meaning of the amendment.
In the specific case here...legally, any person with legal custody of a record is allowed to hand it over to police. If Earthlink violates their own privacy policy and decides to make nice with the FBI, you probably (IANAL) have a civil claim against them. However, whatever they gave the Feebs will probably be admissible in criminal court.
Also, Carnivore, as I understand it, can be used two ways. Either it can give the full content of email, or it can merely report the headers. The latter setting is basically analogous to a "mail cover," in which the information on the outside of a First-Class envelope is recorded. As of yet, there is no Federal case law on whether a mail cover constitutes a search requiring legal justification. My own guess is that the USSC will rule that it isn't, but it'll be a close decision. An email cover would be a lot like a pen register, which the USSC also doesn't consider to be a search requiring warrant.
Also, bear one other thing in mind: In mail that enters the United States from abroad, there is no legal bar to it being opened and inspected. That's for customs purposes, mostly, and I don't know if that reasoning will be extended to email or not. This is a new enough area of case law that there's still a lot of fumbling. Never mind our dual-sovereignty system here in the US, which makes things more complicated. Pen registers ARE considered to be searches by Colorado state courts, and I'm guessing that they'll do the same with mail covers. Likewise, the Federal courts have said that anybody with legal access to records can turn them over to police and have them be admissible, but the Colorado courts have said otherwise, but were a little vague about it.
So, if any of our overseas brethren are not yet thoroughly confused, follow up to this and I'll give a discourse on Colorado forfeiture law ;-)
I actually had the same thing asked of me.
Looking at this map, it's about four hundred road miles and one state line (and two gas-and-caffeine stops, and maybe a meal, and maybe even an hour to wet a line in that stream if I have the time to spare...) from Pudhuff, Kansas, where I was born, to Rathole, Colorado, where I live now. It doesn't feel all that long. Six or eight hours on the road. And ISTR that four hundred road miles can take you from the UK almost all the way to Germany.
In other words, from my eighteenth birthday to my thirty-somethingth later this year, I've moved a distance equivalent to two COUNTRIES away.
I shot a deer last year in a National Forest, a swath of public land that alone is larger than some European countries. And it's certainly not the largest piece of land under USFS control. (side question: Does western Europe even have open public land on that scale, millions of acres/hectares?)
That's something that a lot of Europeans don't seem to get about the US: This place is HUGE! It's thirty and snowing outside my place of gainful unemployment today. At my parents' place, it's about sixty and sunny. And to look at a map, you'd think Rathole and Pudhuff weren't THAT far apart. Certainly closer than our state capital (Denver) and the next one over (Topeka, Kansas, 550 road miles) or our state capital and the national capitol (I'm guessing 2000 miles plus). Hell, this state's land surface probably isn't that far from the surface area of France, and there's another forty-nine states besides us.