by Anthony W. Accurso
The Court of Appeal of California, Fifth Appellate District, vacated a trial court’s decision to deny a defendant participation in mental health diversion, ruling that a diagnosis of Antisocial-Personality Disorder (“ASPD”)—an excluded condition under the statute—does not disqualify him because he was also diagnosed …
by Anthony W. Accurso
Samuel Landes, a federal public defender representing Muhammed Momtaz Alazhari, filed a motion in federal court on August 30, 2021, alleging that the FBI used its small fleet of Cessna airplanes outfitted with spy equipment to continuously surveil Alazhari for 429 hours between April …
by Anthony W. Accurso
Since a New York Times articlein 2019 broke the news that Google’s Sensorvault database stores location information from hundreds of millions of devices worldwide, we have also learned that law enforcement have been increasingly reliant on this data to help solve crimes. Just how …
by Anthony W. Accurso
A public-records request uncovered details about the New York Police Department’s use of a secret fund the agency has been using to purchase surveillance tech.
Two civil rights groups, the Legal Aid Society and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, obtained documents that were …
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Supreme Court of Georgia overruled the Court of Appeals’ line of cases starting with McBee v. State, 491 S.E.2d 97 (Ga. Ct. App. 1997), that apply a “relevance” standard to whether evidence seized outside the scope of a search warrant must be …
by Anthony W. Accurso
In a case of first impression on two issues, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (“SJC”) held that (1) an officer wearing a bodycam inside a suspect’s home during a domestic disturbance call was not a search under the Fourth Amendment and Article 14 …
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Vermont Supreme Court held that it is an unconstitutional search where an officer actively searches for evidence of a crime on a home’s curtilage while present for purpose unrelated to that search.
On August 29, 2019, Devan Calabrese was alleged to have …
by Anthony W. Accurso
Facial recognition is a technology that is rapidly evolving, aided by transformative gains in artificial intelligence and camera resolution, as well as the proliferation of ubiquitous surveillance systems—by both government and corporate actors—which provide the volume of data necessary to train facial recognition systems …
by Anthony W. Accurso
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft continued to sell surveillance technology to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) and Customs and Border Patrol (“CBP”) using subcontractors despite publicly threatening to pull contracts with both agencies over concerns about human rights abuses.
The PR show followed after …
by Anthony W. Accurso
It’s not just hobbyists who are exploiting the near-endless potential of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”). Law enforcement from all over the country—most especially federal agencies—are using, or making plans to use, drones to conduct surveillance and subdue suspects.
Americans first became …