by Anthony W. Accurso
Bonnie Burkhardt was your average tech-oriented government employee who happened to stumble across a network of law enforcement officers who regularly violate federal and Virginia state laws to enrich themselves. If this sounds like the plot of a John Grisham novel, you’ll be surprised to learn ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Court of Appeal of California, Third Appellate District, ordered the suppression of evidence obtained from defendant’s vehicle parked on private property belonging to a family friend after police seized it without a warrant for that location, concluding that the automobile exception to the warrant requirement ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Customs and Border Patrol (“CBP”) launched its 17th surveillance blimp in June 2022, this time in a stationary location over Nogales, Arizona.
CBP put out a press release about the blimp the day before it was launched, though it did not directly notify the residents of ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas held that a warrant affidavit failed to link a defendant’s cellphone to a crime under investigation where the warrant affidavit simply made generic statements about the ubiquity of cellphones and their use during criminal activity.
On September 18th, 2016, ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Hawai’i held that a defendant’s right not to incriminate herself under article I, section 10 of the Hawai’i Constitution was violated when an officer asked her “medical rule-out” questions prior to performing a field sobriety test without first providing the required Miranda ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo issued a public statement via the trade organization, “Reform Government Surveillance,” supporting a bill before the New York State legislature that would prohibit the use of geofence and reverse keyword warrants. The bill, known as The Reverse Location Search Prohibition Act (Assembly ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Over two decades have passed since the infamous PATRIOT Act was passed in response to the terror attacks against the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Several of the provisions of that law persist to this day, including egregious exceptions to requirements under the Fourth Amendment.
After ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Steve Martinot, Instructor Emeritus at the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs at San Francisco State University, wrote a lay explanation of the psychological effects of the surveillance state, explaining its persistent harm and its purpose in perpetuating norms of oppression.
The concept of ubiquitous state surveillance dates ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Public records requests have shed light on a program within the Chicago Police Department (“CPD”) whose purpose is to collect information on people by surveilling their social media profiles and how this program is supported by a similar team at the FBI that provides CPD with ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
A just-unsealed government wiretap application from November 2021 shows that DEA agents in Ohio applied to force WhatsApp to provide metadata on seven users, and all the agency had to say was that “the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation ...
