Posted on 07/24/2012 8:56:18 PM PDT by carenot
A federal judge has upheld the practice of police using seized phones to impersonate their owners, reading messages and sending sending entrapping replies to contacts in the phone's memory, without a warrant. The judge reasoned that constitutional privacy rights don't apply to messages if they appear on a seized device -- even if the messages originated with someone who has not been arrested or is under suspicion of any crime:A federal appeals court held that the pager owner's Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure were not violated because the pager is "nothing more than a contemporary receptacle for telephone numbers," akin to an address book. The court also held that someone who sends his phone number to a pager has no reasonable expectation of privacy because he can't be sure that the pager will be in the hands of its owner.
(Excerpt) Read more at boingboing.net ...
There is no information behind this article.
Who, what, where, when, why, how?
Somebody did something somewhere just because somehow.
...probably...or maybe not. Maybe it’s a trick article.
Who is the federal judge.
What is upholding sneaky rat-bastard perversion of the 4th Amendment.
Where is not so clear, but federal.
When is now.
Why is based on specious reasoning based on unclear understanding of the difference between messaging and pagers.
How is because the judge can.
/johnny
Sorry I didn't research before posting. I don't remember how I happened on the site.
/johnny
If the supposed sender of the texts/emails is not who it is, how can they prove that the one who replied is who they think it is?
Turnabout is fair play.
State judge, not Federal judge.
How about cops can shoot felony stupid and stop shooting dogs and law abiding citizens? I’m okay with that.
Felony stupid (as opposed to misdemeanor ignorance) is shot.
When they don’t need a warrent to do this, there is no reason for a who, what, why, where, and when.
If the article is correct and if I understand it correctly, the judge claimed that the police can take your phone and send messages to your contacts in a effort to set you and them up for crimes if they choose to do it. No warrent necessary. I would guess they need cause to take your phone and that is handled with an arrest.
Interesting logic here...
I imagine that if this is upheld then the numbers of people using these devices might just plummet.
It’s only one more step to make it legal for the police to just handle both sides of a text conversation and use that as evidence in a ‘kangaroo’ trial to bring about convictions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.