by Anthony W. Accurso
Illinois recently passed the Protecting Household Privacy Act (“PHPA”), which limits state law enforcement access to data stored by third parties, i.e., companies like Google and Facebook, requiring warrants in most circumstances, and establishing disclosure and retention limitations.
Both the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Maryland Detective Nick Jerman was featured in a July 2021 episode of the Street Cop Podcast in which he teaches officers to use subterfuge and publicly available facial recognition tools to identify people during traffic stops.
The Street Cop Podcast, hosted by its founder Dennis Benigno, ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Recent FOIA disclosures revealed two contracts for law enforcement agencies under the U.S. Treasury—the IRS and Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”)—which will allow the agencies to obtain location data about persons being investigated, an action that circumvents legal requirements.
Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
On January 7, 2021, the FBI published a document entitled “Lawful Access,” detailing what information is available from various online messaging platforms and providing guidance to various law enforcement agencies on how such data can be obtained through procedures already authorized for investigative purposes.
The document ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Kentucky held that a police officer impermissibly extended a traffic stop when he suspended the completion of writing a traffic citation to assist other officers conducting a vehicle sniff using a drug-detection dog.
Just before midnight on April 21, 2017, Officer Ryan ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Transparency and accountability in law enforcement make for better relationships between police and the communities they serve, but a growing reliance on tech provided to police by private companies is reducing transparency.
An October 2021 report in the journal Science highlighted this trend of outsourcing police ...
Strategies for Pushing Back on Data-Driven Policing Trends
by Anthony W. Accurso
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (“NACDL”) released its Task Force report on data-driven predictive policing in September, 2021, highlighting the failures of predictive policing and making policy recommendations regarding its use.
In 2017, the NACDL created ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of New Hampshire held that a warrantless entry of an enclosed porch attached to a mobile home was constitutionally impermissible because the homeowner took steps to protect his privacy in that space.
Officers with the Conway Police Department received a tip on April ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
Governor Ralph Northam (D-VA) signed posthumous pardons for seven Black men denied due process in a criminal case following a rape allegation involving a white woman in Martinsville, Virginia, in 1949.
On January 8, 1949, 32-year-old Ruby Stroud Floyd alleged she was raped by 13 Black ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The forensic science known as Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (“BPA”)—a.k.a. blood spatter analysis—is undergoing significant development after being the object of intense criticism regarding its reliability in the context of criminal prosecutions. Despite being practiced for over 150 years, this field has undergone two periods of dramatic ...
