The security guard at the front door didn't notice the FBI coming in? The network administrators didn't notice a server popping up on their network? If you have to be officially told that a server has been added to your system the network admins have a major security issue.
Could the fast turn around be caused by the FBI taking images of the drives or possibly have completed their investigation and not found anything. It is even possible that they are actually trying to be responsive and restoring service as quickly as possible.
Another question, if the service is so important then why is relying one a single server? Shouldn't important servers have fallback servers? If there is no user information why isn't there an image that can be quickly restored to another server to get the service back up in hours. To me this indicates that the importance of this seized server has been overblown.
Congratulations on being taken in by yet another misleading sensationalistic summary. It is just as likely that the walked up to the facility, presented their credentials and warrant (which they had) and took the server as stipulated in the warrant. Where in any of the articles is there any indication that the FBI kicked down any doors.
The "caught on tape" phrase is also misleading in that it implies that the FBI agents were sneaking around. It is just as likely that they came to the front door, presented their credentials and stated they were returning the server. They then went into the server room and returned the server to where it belonged. Where in any of the reports is there any statement that the agents were sneaking? Sure they didn't call the server owner or the colocation company telling them what they were doing but that is very different than "sneaking around". If you watch the video you will notice that the agent in front of the rack looks directly at the camera at least three times. He didn't care there was a camera there because they were not sneaking around.
It looks like you really need to understand some definitions before you use spout off.
Due Process is basically that law enforcement must follow the law. Show me where there is a law that requires law enforcement to inform everyone involved as to what they are doing. Considering that to put the server back the colocation company had to know about it as they had to let them in. Does it really matter if the FBI or the colocation compant told the server owner it was back?
Unreasonable search and seizure; It might have been iff they did not have a search warrant signed by a judge in accordance with Fourth Amendment.
Hardware is just a small part of the cost. There is installation and maintenance. The cost of going more than 25M includes installing a pole ever 25m, getting power to the poles and maintaining the repeater on top of the poles. Even solar panels need to be cleaned regularly. Would you rather maintain 2 switches inside buildings and 100M of cable or 16 laser nodes( for redundancy) of which 12 are on top of poles with attached solar panels? All it takes to bring this network down is for a birds with long tails to perch in in the nodes.They may not even work in high fog conditions. LOS lasers too fragile for important networks.
If these can be coupled with solar power and are of low energy use, then I can imagine these being alternative solutions to laying cables in remote areas.
The range is only 25 meters. it is much cheaper to lay 25 meters of cable and a repeater every few kilometers than a laser repeater every 25 meters. If a single repeater goes out the whole line is down. Basically one would have 40 failure points every kilometer. Say one is 10km from the nearest hard line that means 400 repeaters and 400 possible points of failure.
As usual you didn't answer the question but rather decided to troll. You might also look into the case a little more before making bold statements. 1. There was a near riot going on at the platform. 2. Grant was involved in fighting on the train. 3. Oscar Grant was not restrained as the BART officer never had control of his hands (even the family in the wrongful death suit agrees on this point). He had escaped custody at least once before and returned to the train 4. As Grand never surrendered he was never searched and therefore the officers had no way of knowing whether or not he was armed. Any officer will assume someone is armed until they have been cuffed and searched. Grant never got to that point. Even if Grant was unarmed, a struggling man can gain control of an officers gun and use it. 5. The Officer stated he was going to taze Grant and cleared the other officer so as not to taze him too. 6. The Officer grabbed the wrong weapon and shot . 7. Under conditions of stress, adrenaline and split second decision making a tazer and a SIG Sauer P226 can feel very similar in the hand. 8. The officer felt immediate remorse as evidenced by looking frightened, saying "Oh my God" and holding his head in his hands. Everyone on the platform who saw the officer agreed that he looked stunned at what happened. This looks to me like tha actions of someone who made a mistake and knew it. 9. There is a federal civil rights case still open against the officer so it isn't even over yet (this is an exception to the double jeopardy rule) 10. Violent protest had occurred in 2009 over the same issue and there were indications that they would happen again. 11. The "protest" had the wrong target as the Officer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 2 years in prison. If the sentence seems too light then protest the courts who imposed the sentence and not BART who had nothing to do with it. 12. The protest was designed to take place in an area where people could die if they fell of the platform and onto the third rail or in front of a moving train. 13. Finally and most important, the actions of one officer does not justify the disruption of the lives of thousands of commuters who had nothing to do with the issue. Go ahead and protest but do it safely.
I am in no way saying what the officer did was right but since you were not there and hindsight while sitting safely at you computer does not compare with being in the middle of a riot you must be very careful in passing judgement without knowing all the facts.
Record Glider; single seat; relies on thermals (not present at night) or topographical features (not present on the prairies) for lift, spends much of it's time circling in lift to gain altitude, average speeds much lower than 160 knots(re record glider had a best LD speed of 51 knots), large wing span, no cargo capacity, one off custom prototype, relied on other aircraft for takeoff and initial altitude. Aircraft in article; 4 seats, independent of atmospheric lift, 160 knots, much shorter wing span, production aircraft.
Gliders work in certain areas under specific conditions while the aircraft in the article is supposed to work anywhere an time. A glider is as different from this aircraft as a World Solar Challenge vehicle is different from the average passenger sedan.
Considering that Bart is tasked with the safety of their passengers who would you suggest would be a better choice? Bart did not cut off all protest; they just curtailed protest in a dangerous controlled area. Do you really want hundreds of agitated people crowded platforms with trains whizzing by? The protest could just as well have been done above ground in a much safer manner.
Think of this scenario (the one that BART is afraid would happen); 1. Spotters are deployed to every Bart station and report the number of police at each station to a central command. 2. The central command selects a number of stations and sends a text message to all spotters and protesters to converge on those stations. 3. Hundreds of protesters converge on a small number of stations overloading the platforms. 4. People get pushed off the overloaded platforms onto the tracks where they are hit by trains or killed by the third rail 5. Bart closes down system and/or gets sued for not dealing with the situation. 6. Thousands of commuters can not get home because of a few hundred misguided protesters.
Subway platforms are inherently dangerous as there are no barriers between people and the tracks. If you want to protest, go ahead but do it in a safe manner in a safe place. Wouldn't a protest be as useful if it was done above ground and away from the danger area? In fact it would work better as it would not alienate all the commuters who could not get home and/or to work.
It is very simple to verify if the firings were due to budget choices; are the positions open or have other people been hired to fill them? If they have been filled thatn the reason for firing is not budget constraints and the Sheriff lied.
This is a decision from the US District Court of Eastern Virginia> there are two more apeal levels to go; US Court od Appeals and The Supreme Court of the United States. This is going to be appealed mainly due to the SCOTUS taking a very broad view of what is protected speech when political office is involved.
Name and address information from any source that may have it; cell phone company, employer, club membership etc. Phone numbers of all phones owned by someone (To tap them would require a warrant).
If they can get the information without fraud ( misrepresenting themselves, mainly )
Do you mean to for an officer to misrepresent himself and get the information then no officer who does not misrepresent himself should be able to get it. This is an impossible standard. An officer could misrepresent himself to a judge and get a warrant. An officer could misrepresent himself as being on an emergency case, as covered by the new law, and get location information.
Lets start at the end of your post and work backwards. The law in question deals with "location information" and nothing more. It does not deal with a persons "is/texts/calls" and such abuses are beyond this discussion. Any tool given to the police can be abused by a few bad actors and there are laws covering that. You say "an officer can use cell phone positioning to track the spouse or sigOther ensuring their control over that person" does that also mean that we should not allow police to carry gins because they may be used to kill an spouse or sigOther? Not allwing a tool because it can be abused just means that no new tools can be allowed. Would you disallow the use a a pencil because some "bad actors" could use them to write harassing mail? To use an old saying "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater".
What does it mean to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"?
How can anyone be secure in anything if Law Enforcement can do anything they want any time they want? Why do we have a bill of rights or a Constitution with it's amendments?
I just love how you bold that statement except the word "reasonable" and a few others. It seems that you are trying to diminish the importance of the word to skew the meaning of the statement. There are many reasonable searches. For example at a sobriety check point everyone is asked for license and registration even if they do not smell of alcohol. There is a huge difference between "Law Enforcement can do anything they want any time they want" and "Law enforcement can to a few well defined things at time they want". Can an officer come to your house and search any time he wants? NO, and this law does not change that.
Pretty much. There would probably be some items that might fall under "reasonable". Not many. What is ludicrous is for Law Enforcement to be able to look at anything about a Citizen without a real good reason.
I think where your arguments fall down is when you use absolutes like "anything". The statements become over broad and easily refuted. For example Law Enforcement can not look at someone's tax records without a warrant. A more accurate statement would be that Law Enforcement is able to look at a small well defined list of information about a Citizen. The next point is the "good reason". All a warrant does is require the officer to prove to a judge they have a good reason. Officers who have accessed personal information without good reason, even though they do not require a warrant, have been charged with invasion of privacy and some fired. The officer in question was in effect committing the crime of abuse of authority. It is harder to catch without a warrant but requiring the other 99.9% of legitimate inquiries to get a warrant is overkill. Here is a direct question which I challenge you to answer; What items would you consider to be reasonable?
Still lower than the 30 you were positing before.
If you go back ad read the original post I sad at most 30 warrants. Which means somewhere between 1 and 30. It may be 30 because the subject of the search of each telephone number may be considered to me different. It may be five if each telco needs a separate one. It may even be one of that is allowed but I doubt it. It still adds up to thousands of warrants that will be rubber stamped by judges costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and lost time for officers and judges that could be better spent catching and judging suspects.
Under any other situation, a warrent should be required.
Is a warrant required in any of the following situations? 1. Asking an employer for an employee's home address? 2. Asking a credit card company for a card holder's home address? 3. Asking the DMV for the home address of a registered owner? 4. Asking a Post Office box company for the billing address of a renter? There are may times where name and address information is needed by police (and not in an emergency situation) to investigate crime.
You cant just declare "No fair! Now i'll have to follow the law!" as a defense for something like that.
How about declaring "This is a bad law as it would slow investigations and many crimes would never be investigated due to time wasted on getting and serving these warrants." Dealing with a warrant is different that a simple request. The warrant must be vetted by a lawyer, it must be cataloged and filed and it must be retrievable in case questions arise. There are costs in all of those stages. The telco position is best described as "With so many requests with warrants it will cost us millions of dollars in legal fees, clerical staff and storage costs to handle all the warrants. This will cause us to lose money or increase rates."
A final point, what is the use of a warrant when every judge in the nation will grant them. They become just another hoop to jump through that delays police investigation so they can not solve one case and move on to the next.
In my example it would be 5 as a separate one would have to be served on each telco.
So in your mind police should not get any information about anyone without a search warrant. That is ludicrous. So if the police is looking for a suspect they can not go to his employer and as for his home address without a warrant? One police agency can not give information to another agency without a warrant? That would basically entail the police getting a warrant every time they talked to a company.
If it is the Fourth Ammendment you are referring to as the "right" you might want to read it;
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Notice it says "unreasonable searches and seizures" most people would consider a name and billing address to be reasonable.
There is no "the phone company" any more there are many of them. They are not searching the phone they are searching the carrier so for every carrier would need a warrant. In my example there are five phone companies that must be searched therefore at least five warrants.
The police dump the call log from a phone found on a murder victim. The pull off 30 different numbers from five different carriers. That could mean up to 30 warrants to find out the names and addresses of people who talked to the victim in before he was killed. Now multiply that by thousands of cases.
According to the article Sprint disclosed that data 8 million times. can you imagine sprint having to deal with 8 million warrants? Just filing them is a monumental task.
If it is aimed at California government it must be using a blunderbuss because it hits all government entities including Federal and those from other States. So if a government entity calls a telco and asks the location of a phone how does this law apply? Only to phones currently located in California? Only to calls received at telco locations in California? Both?
How about you read this article before explaining the Supremacy Clause. Pay close attention to the section on Supreme Court decisions.
Here is the text of the clause;
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
So yes, if there is a federal law that conflicts with a State Law or Constitution then the Federal law reigns supreme. It does not say the State has to enforce the Federal laws but that the Federal Laws stiill apply.
For example, federal drug laws do not override state drug laws within a state's borders because the constitution gives virtually no jurisdiction to the federal government over what happens within a state's boundaries
Big business, like big labor, hates state sovereignty. It makes the regulatory environment "messy."
Messy does not even begin to describe the issues if every state was allowed to make laws effecting national companies. Interstate commerce is one of the areas regulated by the federal government. Take a look at this case where the Supreme Court struck down a State law even though there was no overriding Federal law. Here is a quote from the decision "This is one of those cases -- few in number -- where local safety measures that are nondiscriminatory place an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce.".
The whole point is that the Interstate Trade Clause can be used to strike down State laws that unconstitutionally burden companies that operate in multiple States.
I think the issue is that the bill could be read as requiring a warrant to obtain the owner's name and billing address when all is known is the phone number. A billing address could be construed as "location information". The telcos really do not want to have to deal with the paperwork involved with a warrant every time a government entity ask for a billing address.
I believe the bill is intended to only cover the physical location of the phone but it is not completely clear that it does not include billing information.
Here is the pertinent part of the law that covers this issue;
(c) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), a government entity may obtain location information in any of the following circumstances: (1) In order to respond to the user's call for emergency services.
If someone calls a 911 operator they can request location information from the telco.
Here is the pertinent part of the law that covers this issue;
(3) Pursuant to a request by a government entity that asserts that the government entity reasonably believes that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to the owner or user requires the immediate access to location information and there is insufficient time to obtain a warrant. The government entity seeking the location information pursuant to this paragraph shall file with the appropriate court a written statement setting forth the facts giving rise to the emergency no later than 48 hours after seeking disclosure.
In emergency situations the government entity does not need a warrant but must document the emergency in court papers within 48 hours.
Slashdot Mirror
The security guard at the front door didn't notice the FBI coming in?
The network administrators didn't notice a server popping up on their network?
If you have to be officially told that a server has been added to your system the network admins have a major security issue.
Could the fast turn around be caused by the FBI taking images of the drives or possibly have completed their investigation and not found anything. It is even possible that they are actually trying to be responsive and restoring service as quickly as possible.
Another question, if the service is so important then why is relying one a single server? Shouldn't important servers have fallback servers? If there is no user information why isn't there an image that can be quickly restored to another server to get the service back up in hours. To me this indicates that the importance of this seized server has been overblown.
Congratulations on being taken in by yet another misleading sensationalistic summary. It is just as likely that the walked up to the facility, presented their credentials and warrant (which they had) and took the server as stipulated in the warrant. Where in any of the articles is there any indication that the FBI kicked down any doors.
The "caught on tape" phrase is also misleading in that it implies that the FBI agents were sneaking around. It is just as likely that they came to the front door, presented their credentials and stated they were returning the server. They then went into the server room and returned the server to where it belonged. Where in any of the reports is there any statement that the agents were sneaking? Sure they didn't call the server owner or the colocation company telling them what they were doing but that is very different than "sneaking around". If you watch the video you will notice that the agent in front of the rack looks directly at the camera at least three times. He didn't care there was a camera there because they were not sneaking around.
It looks like you really need to understand some definitions before you use spout off.
Due Process is basically that law enforcement must follow the law. Show me where there is a law that requires law enforcement to inform everyone involved as to what they are doing. Considering that to put the server back the colocation company had to know about it as they had to let them in. Does it really matter if the FBI or the colocation compant told the server owner it was back?
Unreasonable search and seizure; It might have been iff they did not have a search warrant signed by a judge in accordance with Fourth Amendment.
Hardware is just a small part of the cost. There is installation and maintenance. The cost of going more than 25M includes installing a pole ever 25m, getting power to the poles and maintaining the repeater on top of the poles. Even solar panels need to be cleaned regularly. Would you rather maintain 2 switches inside buildings and 100M of cable or 16 laser nodes( for redundancy) of which 12 are on top of poles with attached solar panels? All it takes to bring this network down is for a birds with long tails to perch in in the nodes.They may not even work in high fog conditions. LOS lasers too fragile for important networks.
If these can be coupled with solar power and are of low energy use, then I can imagine these being alternative solutions to laying cables in remote areas.
The range is only 25 meters. it is much cheaper to lay 25 meters of cable and a repeater every few kilometers than a laser repeater every 25 meters. If a single repeater goes out the whole line is down. Basically one would have 40 failure points every kilometer. Say one is 10km from the nearest hard line that means 400 repeaters and 400 possible points of failure.
I wonder if this will have any effect on the Oracle/Google suit considering international copyright treaties.
Here is a more complete article.
As usual you didn't answer the question but rather decided to troll.
You might also look into the case a little more before making bold statements.
1. There was a near riot going on at the platform.
2. Grant was involved in fighting on the train.
3. Oscar Grant was not restrained as the BART officer never had control of his hands (even the family in the wrongful death suit agrees on this point). He had escaped custody at least once before and returned to the train
4. As Grand never surrendered he was never searched and therefore the officers had no way of knowing whether or not he was armed. Any officer will assume someone is armed until they have been cuffed and searched. Grant never got to that point. Even if Grant was unarmed, a struggling man can gain control of an officers gun and use it.
5. The Officer stated he was going to taze Grant and cleared the other officer so as not to taze him too.
6. The Officer grabbed the wrong weapon and shot .
7. Under conditions of stress, adrenaline and split second decision making a tazer and a SIG Sauer P226 can feel very similar in the hand.
8. The officer felt immediate remorse as evidenced by looking frightened, saying "Oh my God" and holding his head in his hands. Everyone on the platform who saw the officer agreed that he looked stunned at what happened. This looks to me like tha actions of someone who made a mistake and knew it.
9. There is a federal civil rights case still open against the officer so it isn't even over yet (this is an exception to the double jeopardy rule)
10. Violent protest had occurred in 2009 over the same issue and there were indications that they would happen again.
11. The "protest" had the wrong target as the Officer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 2 years in prison. If the sentence seems too light then protest the courts who imposed the sentence and not BART who had nothing to do with it.
12. The protest was designed to take place in an area where people could die if they fell of the platform and onto the third rail or in front of a moving train.
13. Finally and most important, the actions of one officer does not justify the disruption of the lives of thousands of commuters who had nothing to do with the issue. Go ahead and protest but do it safely.
I am in no way saying what the officer did was right but since you were not there and hindsight while sitting safely at you computer does not compare with being in the middle of a riot you must be very careful in passing judgement without knowing all the facts.
Record Glider; single seat; relies on thermals (not present at night) or topographical features (not present on the prairies) for lift, spends much of it's time circling in lift to gain altitude, average speeds much lower than 160 knots(re record glider had a best LD speed of 51 knots), large wing span, no cargo capacity, one off custom prototype, relied on other aircraft for takeoff and initial altitude.
Aircraft in article; 4 seats, independent of atmospheric lift, 160 knots, much shorter wing span, production aircraft.
Gliders work in certain areas under specific conditions while the aircraft in the article is supposed to work anywhere an time. A glider is as different from this aircraft as a World Solar Challenge vehicle is different from the average passenger sedan.
Considering that Bart is tasked with the safety of their passengers who would you suggest would be a better choice? Bart did not cut off all protest; they just curtailed protest in a dangerous controlled area. Do you really want hundreds of agitated people crowded platforms with trains whizzing by? The protest could just as well have been done above ground in a much safer manner.
Think of this scenario (the one that BART is afraid would happen);
1. Spotters are deployed to every Bart station and report the number of police at each station to a central command.
2. The central command selects a number of stations and sends a text message to all spotters and protesters to converge on those stations.
3. Hundreds of protesters converge on a small number of stations overloading the platforms.
4. People get pushed off the overloaded platforms onto the tracks where they are hit by trains or killed by the third rail
5. Bart closes down system and/or gets sued for not dealing with the situation.
6. Thousands of commuters can not get home because of a few hundred misguided protesters.
Subway platforms are inherently dangerous as there are no barriers between people and the tracks. If you want to protest, go ahead but do it in a safe manner in a safe place. Wouldn't a protest be as useful if it was done above ground and away from the danger area? In fact it would work better as it would not alienate all the commuters who could not get home and/or to work.
A completely valid justification is "we don't work well together". They are not union jobs. By the way, 2 of the people fired were deputies.
It is very simple to verify if the firings were due to budget choices; are the positions open or have other people been hired to fill them? If they have been filled thatn the reason for firing is not budget constraints and the Sheriff lied.
This is a decision from the US District Court of Eastern Virginia> there are two more apeal levels to go; US Court od Appeals and The Supreme Court of the United States. This is going to be appealed mainly due to the SCOTUS taking a very broad view of what is protected speech when political office is involved.
What items would you consider to be reasonable?
Name and address information from any source that may have it; cell phone company, employer, club membership etc.
Phone numbers of all phones owned by someone (To tap them would require a warrant).
If they can get the information without fraud ( misrepresenting themselves, mainly )
Do you mean to for an officer to misrepresent himself and get the information then no officer who does not misrepresent himself should be able to get it. This is an impossible standard. An officer could misrepresent himself to a judge and get a warrant. An officer could misrepresent himself as being on an emergency case, as covered by the new law, and get location information.
Lets start at the end of your post and work backwards. The law in question deals with "location information" and nothing more. It does not deal with a persons "is/texts/calls" and such abuses are beyond this discussion. Any tool given to the police can be abused by a few bad actors and there are laws covering that. You say "an officer can use cell phone positioning to track the spouse or sigOther ensuring their control over that person" does that also mean that we should not allow police to carry gins because they may be used to kill an spouse or sigOther? Not allwing a tool because it can be abused just means that no new tools can be allowed. Would you disallow the use a a pencil because some "bad actors" could use them to write harassing mail? To use an old saying "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater".
What does it mean to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"?
How can anyone be secure in anything if Law Enforcement can do anything they want any time they want?
Why do we have a bill of rights or a Constitution with it's amendments?
I just love how you bold that statement except the word "reasonable" and a few others. It seems that you are trying to diminish the importance of the word to skew the meaning of the statement. There are many reasonable searches. For example at a sobriety check point everyone is asked for license and registration even if they do not smell of alcohol. There is a huge difference between "Law Enforcement can do anything they want any time they want" and "Law enforcement can to a few well defined things at time they want". Can an officer come to your house and search any time he wants? NO, and this law does not change that.
Pretty much. There would probably be some items that might fall under "reasonable". Not many.
What is ludicrous is for Law Enforcement to be able to look at anything about a Citizen without a real good reason.
I think where your arguments fall down is when you use absolutes like "anything". The statements become over broad and easily refuted. For example Law Enforcement can not look at someone's tax records without a warrant. A more accurate statement would be that Law Enforcement is able to look at a small well defined list of information about a Citizen. The next point is the "good reason". All a warrant does is require the officer to prove to a judge they have a good reason. Officers who have accessed personal information without good reason, even though they do not require a warrant, have been charged with invasion of privacy and some fired. The officer in question was in effect committing the crime of abuse of authority. It is harder to catch without a warrant but requiring the other 99.9% of legitimate inquiries to get a warrant is overkill. Here is a direct question which I challenge you to answer; What items would you consider to be reasonable?
Still lower than the 30 you were positing before.
If you go back ad read the original post I sad at most 30 warrants. Which means somewhere between 1 and 30. It may be 30 because the subject of the search of each telephone number may be considered to me different. It may be five if each telco needs a separate one. It may even be one of that is allowed but I doubt it. It still adds up to thousands of warrants that will be rubber stamped by judges costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and lost time for officers and judges that could be better spent catching and judging suspects.
Under any other situation, a warrent should be required.
Is a warrant required in any of the following situations?
1. Asking an employer for an employee's home address?
2. Asking a credit card company for a card holder's home address?
3. Asking the DMV for the home address of a registered owner?
4. Asking a Post Office box company for the billing address of a renter?
There are may times where name and address information is needed by police (and not in an emergency situation) to investigate crime.
You cant just declare "No fair! Now i'll have to follow the law!" as a defense for something like that.
How about declaring "This is a bad law as it would slow investigations and many crimes would never be investigated due to time wasted on getting and serving these warrants." Dealing with a warrant is different that a simple request. The warrant must be vetted by a lawyer, it must be cataloged and filed and it must be retrievable in case questions arise. There are costs in all of those stages. The telco position is best described as "With so many requests with warrants it will cost us millions of dollars in legal fees, clerical staff and storage costs to handle all the warrants. This will cause us to lose money or increase rates."
A final point, what is the use of a warrant when every judge in the nation will grant them. They become just another hoop to jump through that delays police investigation so they can not solve one case and move on to the next.
In my example it would be 5 as a separate one would have to be served on each telco.
So in your mind police should not get any information about anyone without a search warrant. That is ludicrous. So if the police is looking for a suspect they can not go to his employer and as for his home address without a warrant? One police agency can not give information to another agency without a warrant? That would basically entail the police getting a warrant every time they talked to a company.
If it is the Fourth Ammendment you are referring to as the "right" you might want to read it;
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Notice it says "unreasonable searches and seizures" most people would consider a name and billing address to be reasonable.
There is no "the phone company" any more there are many of them. They are not searching the phone they are searching the carrier so for every carrier would need a warrant. In my example there are five phone companies that must be searched therefore at least five warrants.
The police dump the call log from a phone found on a murder victim. The pull off 30 different numbers from five different carriers. That could mean up to 30 warrants to find out the names and addresses of people who talked to the victim in before he was killed. Now multiply that by thousands of cases.
According to the article Sprint disclosed that data 8 million times. can you imagine sprint having to deal with 8 million warrants? Just filing them is a monumental task.
If it is aimed at California government it must be using a blunderbuss because it hits all government entities including Federal and those from other States. So if a government entity calls a telco and asks the location of a phone how does this law apply? Only to phones currently located in California? Only to calls received at telco locations in California? Both?
How about you read this article before explaining the Supremacy Clause. Pay close attention to the section on Supreme Court decisions.
Here is the text of the clause;
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
So yes, if there is a federal law that conflicts with a State Law or Constitution then the Federal law reigns supreme. It does not say the State has to enforce the Federal laws but that the Federal Laws stiill apply.
For example, federal drug laws do not override state drug laws within a state's borders because the constitution gives virtually no jurisdiction to the federal government over what happens within a state's boundaries
Actually the Constitution does give federal law a lot of jurisdiction in States. Take a look at this article>/a>. Note that federal agents can still enforce federal drug laws against marijuana in California. Here is the Supreme Court Case that uphold the federal law even when it conflicts with State law.
Big business, like big labor, hates state sovereignty. It makes the regulatory environment "messy."
Messy does not even begin to describe the issues if every state was allowed to make laws effecting national companies. Interstate commerce is one of the areas regulated by the federal government. Take a look at this case where the Supreme Court struck down a State law even though there was no overriding Federal law. Here is a quote from the decision "This is one of those cases -- few in number -- where local safety measures that are nondiscriminatory place an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce.".
The whole point is that the Interstate Trade Clause can be used to strike down State laws that unconstitutionally burden companies that operate in multiple States.
I think the issue is that the bill could be read as requiring a warrant to obtain the owner's name and billing address when all is known is the phone number. A billing address could be construed as "location information". The telcos really do not want to have to deal with the paperwork involved with a warrant every time a government entity ask for a billing address.
I believe the bill is intended to only cover the physical location of the phone but it is not completely clear that it does not include billing information.
Here is the pertinent part of the law that covers this issue;
(c) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), a government entity may
obtain location information in any of the following circumstances:
(1) In order to respond to the user's call for emergency services.
If someone calls a 911 operator they can request location information from the telco.
Here is the pertinent part of the law that covers this issue;
(3) Pursuant to a request by a government entity that asserts that
the government entity reasonably believes that an emergency
involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to the
owner or user requires the immediate access to location information
and there is insufficient time to obtain a warrant. The government
entity seeking the location information pursuant to this paragraph
shall file with the appropriate court a written statement setting
forth the facts giving rise to the emergency no later than 48 hours
after seeking disclosure.
In emergency situations the government entity does not need a warrant but must document the emergency in court papers within 48 hours.