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 ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
In the first known public instance of such a warrant, a US District Court approved a warrant allowing the FBI to use a suspect’s face to unlock his secure messaging app in order to find evidence of a crime in his chat history.
The FBI was ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled that police lacked reasonable suspicion of a window tint violation justifying a traffic stop in which a loaded handgun was recovered where police could see through the tinted rear windshield sufficiently to determine there was a single occupant attempting ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
In an opinion issued on May 10, 2022, the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that defense counsel’s waiver of the defendant’s right to testify on the record in the defendant’s presence while the defendant remained silent constitutes a valid waiver of the defendant’s right to testify ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that prolonging a traffic stop, even for a short period of time, to ensure an officer’s safety is unreasonable where the officer himself created the safety risk through his actions.
Around 2:00 a.m. in the early ...
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Hawai’i ruled that the apparent randomness and violent nature of the offense for which a suspect was being investigated is insufficient to justify the warrantless entry of his home under the exigent circumstances exception, even though there was probable cause to arrest ...
