Good morning. Thanks for the thread.

Roberts is joined by liberals in saying law enforcement needs warrant to access cellphone tower records

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31 minutes ago

Here's the opinion in Carpenter. Amy will have our analysis:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf

ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. KENNEDY, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS and ALITO, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS, J., joined. GORSUCH, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

Thank God I don't have to explain Carpenter because @OrinKerr will. Follow him.

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Carpenter is 5-4, with the Chief plus the liberal Justices.

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Thanks for the ancillary info!!

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how many cases might get thrown out....

He is a loon on a lot of things but his take on privacy is interesting. He dissented as he felt the majority opinion did not go far enough in protecting the expectation of privacy. You can see a real distinction between Gorsuch and Alito, goes to show that rightwingers come in different flavors.

particularly when it comes to the 4th Amendment. You can really see Scalia's take on privacy when he wrote the majority opinion for U.S. vs Jones and the use of a GPS tracker on a vehicle without a warrant when the vehicle was used by suspect.

case wherein Thomas wrote “I have serious doubts about the ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ test.” !!!!! Several decades of privacy law are based on that premise, BUT it's not written in the constitution, rather an interpretation embedded into our judicial fibers.

Gorsuch is a hard-core originalist, and all his decisions should be examined for how they will lead to others that dismantle our 21st-century ideas of what our nation is. Back in the late 1700s searches had to be physical and limited to what was physically available, and that is what the Fourth Amendment was meant to cover. Then.

interpretations, stemmed after the invention and use of the telephone and expanded from there (where the "radio/telephone" rulings became a template for how to handle cases involving much of the later tech). But these cases have ebbed and flowed (like Olmstead vs U.S. which was overturned by Katz vs U.S.).

I think the issue is not so much breaching "privacy" but whether there needs to be a warrant to do so under certain circumstances.

to an expectation of privacy? That seemed like a very serious red flag.

and what might be defined as an "unreasonable search and seizure", where there continue to be willy nilly searches and/or surveillance without them. There are obviously issues where LEO are doing investigations and trying to end run around getting a warrant but (thinking "literal" ) the 4th amendment is not prohibiting searches and seizures, but supposedly prohibits "unreasonable" ones.

People have taken their DNA and uploaded it, along with their family trees, to a public database.

Using the DNA from the perp, but processing it differently than CODIS does -- instead, having them get the STRs that 23andMe/Ancestry test -- then uploading that profile to GEDMatch.... well, it found a relative of the dirty cop who was involved. They then took swabs, if I recall correctly, from his car doorhandle to see if they matched the GRS's profile as run through CODIS's processing (different markers). Used that all to get a warrant compelling a direct sample after the doorhandle DNA showed the likelihood someone who touched that car door handle was the GSR.

Should it require a warrant to access genetic information people have uploaded into the public domain if it's attempting to find a criminal vs give closure to families?

Because the technique just recently solved a famous cold unidentified decedent case -- he'd been reported missing because he said things when he left his family in 1965 (plus was a Purple Heart WWII Navy veteran who still had shrapel in him and burned his uniforms when he came back then, the family all knew the war had affected him) that they interpreted as possible suicidal intent. But his missing persons case was never taken seriously or uploaded into NamUs.

Sometime in 1976 he stopped working under his real identity, and in 1978 stole the identity of an 8-year-old boy. When he decided to commit suicide, apparently because of a cancer diagnosis, he sealed up his apartment in July, turned off the AC, and marked off days on a calendar so they would have a death date. He was cremated before they knew he wasn't who he said he was, and couldn't get prints off the body. The DNA came from preserved tissue from a medical encounter.

Robert Ivan Nichols, as we now know him to be, was always a potential Zodiac suspect to cold case junkies, just because of resemblance and the fact they knew he was running from something big, but now with them planning to attempt to get DNA from the Zodiac letters... it could interesting.

Nichols's son spoke at the press conference and was happy to have closure, to at least know. They have been pursuing forensic identification in several other cases, including solving a mystery close to home -- Marcia King was identified and turned out to be from Arkansas. Her mother kept the same telephone number and refused to move for decades hoping her daughter might come home. But police refused to take a report back then.

We are getting into technology that has huge potential to bring closure to families of the long-term missing, but should a warrant be required before cases that could end up getting someone arrested are used? If it catches more dirty cops, hell to the no. But what if this makes people searching for adoptive relatives, or half siblings, etc, afraid of using GEDMatch?

they (LEO - FBI) already use DNA (and fingerprint) biometric data for cross-checking but it will be interesting to see if a court case comes through for public databases like the genealogy sites OR for example, I understand that Disney World is fingerprinting visitors to supposedly reduce "ticket fraud". So what happens if that system gets hacked or data from it is requested by LEO (with or without a warrant)?

So yes, we are in that slippery slope...

Sigh. I think I've reached to that emotionally overloaded state. Just temporary.

Do we really feel less anxiety that any NSA, H SECURITY, ICE, FBI, local cops will not scuttle the law at their convenience to secure evidence against any suspect of any flavor. What has always concerned me is the ease at which high tech operatives can violate these obstacles to search and seizures among the various l.e., police state formats.

These infractions go unseen and undetectable as they were designed to perform.

still perplexes and concerns me. It's used by Justices as a tool of logic and interpretation for political purposes. We don't know what the Framers would say about cell phones. Period. Maybe it's akin to the U.S. Mail and first class privacy, maybe not. We're secure in our persons and homes, or we're supposed to be. Colonial homes were physically protected. No one was listening to you if no one else was there. Not so much anymore.

limit what those of more means can do to those of less.

They talk a high-minded game. But what they claim to believe should always be checked against the expected results of their applied ideology. The resulting chances would virtually always benefit and empower the wealthy and the government over the individual, and the populace as a whole.

And in their new real world of big imbalances of power, the fixes they so "idealistically" claim of just passing new laws and constitutional amendments might not be possible for decades, or longer.

The orientalists are freaking hypocrites. They expanded the 2nd Amendment to allow for modern times when guns to say a militia is not required to own a gun. Then, when it suits their fancy, the find a way to say that modern methods are not really protected by the original intent.

That's fucking hypocritical.

it furthers their personal agendas. Religious rights for corporations that are publicly traded, even in a limited manner?

it won't be difficult to get a warrant.

alignments.

This will be litigated for a long time if they breach the area of surveillance cameras. There are private ones of course - businesses who use them for security and deterrence. These are where police head to ID criminals after an incident. But it seems to me there are also government surveillance cameras. Cities use them, municipalities use them sometimes. They tried to place them on some little bridges in my state and there was an uproar.

I'd bet this winds up legalizing the collection of information, but restricting its use. Much like phone meta-data. And citizens have little recourse against collection of information by private enterprise or individuals.