Free Republic

But can law enforcement themselves be entrapped? That seems to be the extraordinary claim of the Racine, Wisconsin police department in the case of an open carrier who was arrested for obstructing justice after he apparently refused to identify himself when officers began questioning him for open carrying on the porch of his own home. The facts are still emerging, but reports seem to agree that officers were in the neighborhood where Frank Rock lives on Wednesday night investigating the shooting of one or more raccoons. While in the neighborhood, officers noticed that Rock, sitting peacefully on his front porch,...

The Federal government's “Cash-for-clunkers” program provides assistance to consumers wishing to trade in their older vehicle for a newer, more fuel-efficient vehicle. But the program's website contained language in a security warning that stated by agreeing to the terms, the user's computer and all of its files would become government property. Last Friday, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck brought attention to the disclaimer on the Cars.gov dealer support page, which originally stated: “When logged on to the CARS system, your computer is considered a Federal computer system and is the property of the U.S. Government. Any or all uses of...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a strip search of a 13-year-old schoolgirl by administrators looking for banned medication was unconstitutional.The high court held in the 8 to 1 opinion that a male assistant school principal in Arizona and a female nurse violated student Savanna Redding's rights when they ordered her to partially undress in a fruitless search for a tiny amount of Ibuprofen pain relief pills.Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented in the "regrettable decision" by the majority, reveling in the details of the teen drama.The conservative justice even questioned whether Redding was really strip-searched - arguing that...

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school's strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal. In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding in the rural eastern Arizona town of Safford. Redding, who now attends college, was 13 when officials at Safford Middle School ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills - the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from...

In August 1999 police saw Rodney Gant pull into the driveway of his Tucson home and arrested him for driving with a suspended license. After handcuffing Gant and locking him in a cruiser, Officer Todd Griffith searched his car, finding a bag of cocaine in the pocket of a jacket on the backseat. When he was asked at an evidentiary hearing why he searched the car, Griffith replied, "Because the law says we can do it."Not anymore. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court said police may no longer routinely search the vehicles of recently arrested people. It was a refreshing...

The Supreme Court handed down Arizona v. Gant this morning, imposing a new limitation on the search incident to arrest power when the police want to search an automobile. Under New York v. Belton, the rule has been that the police can search the passenger area of a car when they arrest an occupant or recent occupant of the vehicle. Today, in a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court added a new limitation: The police can search a car following arrest only if they could have a reasonable belief 1) that the person arrested "could have accessed his car at...

Seconds after BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, police immediately began confiscating cell phones containing videos that have yet to see the light of day. In fact, the only videos that have been seen by the public were filmed by people who managed to leave the scene before police confronted them.In one instance, police chased after Karina Vargas after she stepped on the train, banging on the window after the doors closed and demanding her to turn over the camera. The train sped away with Vargas still holding her camera.Her video, which did not show the...

The United States Supreme Court today ruled that jurors may hear evidence discovered in a search based on faulty information in a police computer database. The court ruled that the US constitution's protections against unreasonable search and seizure do not exclude evidence gained through "isolated negligence" where there is no evidence of police wrongdoing.

Mohamed Shommo, an engineer for Cisco Systems Inc., travels overseas several times a year for work, so he is accustomed to opening his bags for border inspections upon returning to the U.S. But in recent years, these inspections have gone much deeper than his luggage. Border agents have scrutinized family pictures on Shommo's digital camera, examined Koranic verses and other audio files on his iPod and even looked up Google keyword searches he had typed into his company laptop. "They literally searched everywhere and every device they could," said Shommo, who now minimizes what he takes on international trips and...

(11-24) 16:23 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Police who stop a car without a legal reason may be allowed to use evidence they find in the vehicle against the driver or a passenger, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday. The court unanimously reinstated the drug conviction and four-year prison sentence of a Northern California man whose previous appeal in the case led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on passengers' rights. The case dates from Nov. 27, 2001, when a Sutter County sheriff's deputy stopped a car in Yuba City just after midnight. The car's registration had expired, but the owner...

Dog's bad nose prompts judge to toss drug case By Todd Ruger Published: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 1:32 p.m. Last Modified: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 1:35 p.m. MANATEE COUNTY — Another circuit judge threw out evidence in a drug possession case, ruling that a narcotics-sniffing dog’s nose was not reliable enough to justify searching a vehicle. Matthew McNeal is the second Manatee County defendant to escape drug possession charges this year because Talon, a now-retired K-9 from the Palmetto Police Department, alerted to the odor of drugs in a car and officers used that to search it. Defense...

A Pasco, Wash., man was arrested this morning by Oregon State Police after about 115 pounds of marijuana was found in a van he was driving north on Interstate 5. Lt. Brian Powers said Jesus Lopez-Ramos, 53, was the only occupant in the van, which was stopped about 8 a.m. south of Ashland for a traffic violation. There was a marijuana odor in the van. Lopez-Ramos is being held in Jackson County Jail on suspicion of possession, distribution and manufacturing of marijuana. State police valued the marijuana at about $345,000.

All officers involved were fired or quit The raid on Russell's Tire Shop had the look of a successful garden-variety drug bust. Acting on an informant's tip, police stormed the building on North Galvez Street and hauled out three suspects, a bag of heroin, a quarter-ounce of crack cocaine and more than $4,000 in cash. Police say they found the evidence in plain sight. But 11 months after the August 2002 bust, prosecutors dropped the charges. And this June, attorneys for the city offered the men accused of dealing the drugs $85,000 to settle a lawsuit that alleged the four...

Prosecutors can’t use secret videotapes of a Watertown minister having sex with his comatose wife while she was in a nursing home, the 4th District Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. Advertisement The man faces eight felonies — four counts of second-degree sexual assault of an unconscious person and four counts of third-degree sexual assault — as well as a misdemeanor. The case raises a number of issues, including a nursing home’s obligation to protect the health and safety of a patient, an individual’s right to privacy and questions of marital sexual abuse. According to the appellate decision and other court...

This is the first of two stories adapted from "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press. EXCERPT: "The United States was at war with al-Qaeda, intelligence-gathering is inherent in war, and the Constitution appoints the president commander in chief. But they had not been asked to give their own written assessments of the legality of domestic espionage. They based their answer in part on the attorney general's certification of the "form and legality" of the president's orders. Yet neither man had been allowed to see the program's codeword-classified legal analyses [5], which were prepared by...

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department made public on Friday a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing.......

Government Must Get a Warrant Before Seizing Cell Phone Location Records San Francisco - In an unprecedented victory for cell phone privacy, a federal court has affirmed that cell phone location information stored by a mobile phone provider is protected by the Fourth Amendment and that the government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause before seizing such records.The Department of Justice (DOJ) had asked the federal court in the Western District of Pennsylvania to overturn a magistrate judge's decision requiring the government to obtain a warrant for stored location data, arguing that the government could obtain such information...

NOW might be a good time to buy some FedEx stock. International travelers are sure to be shipping a lot of laptops on overnight delivery to avoid losing them for hours or weeks - thanks to the Department of Homeland Security's new confiscation policy. Congress recently forced the department to admit it has assumed authority to take an air traveler's laptop computer (or any other electronic device) to an undisclosed location for an unspecified time to check for suspicious files - even "absent individualized suspicion" of wrongdoing. [Snip] Being "randomly" wanded and frisked at an airport-security checkpoint is bad enough,...

The Prince George's County Sheriff's Office has concluded in an internal review that its deputies were justified when they shot and killed two dogs belonging to the mayor of Berwyn Heights during a July drug raid, Sheriff Michael Jackson said yesterday. The sheriff said that one dog was engaging an officer and that the other was running toward a second officer at the time the black Labs were shot, but the ruling did not satisfy the mayor, who said the inquiry was incomplete and misleading. Jackson released the results of the review in response to a scientific examination of the...

Oklahoma police investigating the shooting deaths of two girls have told area residents with guns to bring them in for a test to determine whether they were used in the attack, sparking concern among those who own guns for hunting and self-defense. According to reports in the Tulsa World the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation sent letters to members of the community who were registered as owning .40-caliber handguns suggesting they voluntarily bring in their gun or guns for a test. The individuals who were "invited" to bring their guns in but didn't now will be included in the ongoing...

PORT ANGELES, Wash. (AP) - Watch for more impromptu U.S. Border Patrol immigration checkpoints around the north Olympic Peninsula, an agent says. One such checkpoint was set up Friday near the Hood Canal Floating Bridge. Another was used about six months ago near Forks. The latest checkpoint, set up a mile west of the bridge, operated for five hours Friday. The main objective of the temporary checkpoints is to catch terrorists and illegal immigrants, Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Michael Bermudez said. They're also used with local law enforcement to arrest felons and seize drugs and weapons, he said. Friday's checkpoint...

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey has agreed to allow Congressional hearings, but not to delay, the implementation of new FBI regulations that would allow them to spy on American citizens who are not suspected of any crime. As an editorial in the New York Times points out, this is a power that has a history of abuse. In times past, it was used to wiretap Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to spy on other civil rights and anti-war protesters." As Dekortage points out, "Several senators have formally complained that citizens could be investigated...

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "In Vermont, US Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier has ruled that forcing someone to divulge the password to decrypt their hard drive violates the 5th Amendment. Border guards testify that they saw child pornography on the defendant's laptop when the PC was on, but they made the mistake of turning it off and were unable to access it again because the drive was protected by PGP. Although prosecutors offered many ways to get around the 5th Amendment protections, the Judge would have none of that and quashed the grand jury subpoena requesting the defendant's...

Planners seeking to rebuild the World Trade Center have always envisioned that the 16-acre site would have a vibrant streetscape with distinctive buildings, shops and cultural institutions lining a newly restored street grid. From the destruction of Sept. 11, 2001, a new neighborhood teeming with life would be born. But now, the Police Department’s latest security proposal entails heavy restrictions. According to a 36-page presentation given by top-ranking police officials in recent months, the entire area would be placed within a security zone, in which only specially screened taxis, limousines and cars would be allowed through “sally ports,” or barriers...

Gun Owners' Weapons Tested (Tests Will Be Matched With Evidence From Scene Of Weleetka Double Killing.

Agents test fire weapons to narrow leads in the June 8 killing of the girls near Weleetka. WELEETKA — More than three dozen guns from the Weleetka area were test fired over the weekend as authorities worked to narrow their leads into the June 8 slayings of two girls. Jessica Brown, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, said more than 60 letters were sent out to registered owners of .40-caliber handguns, asking them to voluntarily submit their weapons for testing on Saturday and Sunday at the Okfuskee County Courthouse at Okemah. Brown said about 40 of those owners...

The "Cindy Bischof Law" has the potential for victimizing innocent Illinois fathers and may spread nationwide. The Bischof Law is a draconian measure that will allow judges to order anyone, mostly men and fathers, to wear a GPS tracking device if they are simply considered to be at a high risk for domestic violence without being found guilty of any crime. There is a presumption of guilt without the benefit of a trial, yet the foundation of our criminal justice system is that a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Perhaps such a drastic measure would be warranted...

Someone was attacking women in Fairfax County and Alexandria, grabbing them from behind and sometimes punching and molesting them before running away. After logging 11 cases in six months, police finally identified a suspect. David Lee Foltz Jr., who had served 17 years in prison for rape, lived near the crime scenes. To figure out if Foltz was the assailant, police pulled out their secret weapon: They put a Global Positioning System device on Foltz's van, which allowed them to track his movements. Police said they soon caught Foltz dragging a woman into a wooded area in Falls Church. After...

Home Science Under Attack In Massachusetts An anonymous reader tips a guest posting up on the MAKE Magazine blog by the author of the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. It seems that authorities in Massachusetts have raided a home chemistry lab, apparently without a warrant, and made off with all of its contents. Here's the local article from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. "Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its...

The city, created in 2006 after the rival cities of Helena and West Helena joined, is in one of the nation's poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living. Phillips County lost a third of its population from 1970 to 2000 and, of the 24,107 people who remain, more than a quarter live in poverty.

Folks, I'm so mad I can't see straight and I hope the smarter(than me) people here at FR can advise us on this. At school registration we got a handout informing us about a change to school policy. Starting this school year, any student who wishes to participate in any extra curricular or co-curricular activities must consent to random drug testing! Needless to say I was 'stuned' and speechless. We're not a big metropolitan school district, we're a very small, rural school. This was apparently done during a closed session of the school board's meeting over the summer. As far...

Agam Shah, IDG News Service Fri Aug 1, 7:50 PM ET Travelers beware: U.S. agents now have the authority to seize and retain laptops indefinitely, according to a new policy detailed in documents issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

HARTFORD -- Using a unique state law, police in Connecticut have disarmed dozens of gun owners based on suspicions that they might harm themselves or others. The state's gun seizure law is considered the first and only law in the country that allows the confiscation of a gun before the owner commits an act of violence. Police and state prosecutors can obtain seizure warrants based on concerns about someone's intentions. State police and 53 police departments have seized more than 1,700 guns since the law took effect in October 1999, according to a new report to the legislature. There are...

Travellers to the U.S. could have their laptops and other electronic devices seized at the airport under new anti-terror measures. Federal agents have been granted powers to take such devices and hold them as long as they like. They do not even need grounds to suspect wrongdoing. The Department of Homeland Security said the policies applied to anyone entering the country by land, sea or air, including U.S. citizens. The extent of the new powers, which have been secretly in place for some time, was revealed yesterday in the Washington Post.

Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border No Suspicion Required Under DHS Policies Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border. A pair of DHS policies from last month say that customs agents can routinely--as a matter of course--seize, make copies of, and "analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States." (See policy No. 1 and No. 2.) DHS claims the border search of electronic information is useful to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and people violating "copyright or trademark laws."...

In further evidence of our rapidly eroding civil liberties, the Department of Homeland Security disclosed today that US Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement have the right to confiscate and search a traveler's laptop or other electronic device without any suspicion of wrongdoing. The rules -- which we reported on in February -- allow for searches of hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, and video or audio tapes, and specify that the agencies can "detain" belongings for a "reasonable period of time," (i.e., as long as they please). Additionally, the DHS can share the data...

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons...

was a headline waiting to happen: "FBI grabs Princess' Diaries." The FBI confiscated Anne Hathaway's intimate diaries during another raid on Raffaello Follieri’s $37,500-a-month Trump Tower apartment, according to the Daily News. Anne's former boyfriend is charged with 11 counts of fraud and money laundering. Anne has not been implicated or charged with any crime. She has cut off all contact with her ex and changed her numbers so he can’t reach her, a friend told the Daily News, but "he has been trying to call her all the time.” Maybe he should be charged with stalking as well.

An outspoken Long Island gun owner's home was raided by Nassau County detectives, who seized two dozen weapons he lawfully owns just one day after Rep. Carolyn McCarthy's office made a 911 call about him.

HOMEOWNERS must let council inspectors in to check for DANCING BEARS after they were handed 1,043 powers to pry. Armies of clipboard-touting officials can demand entry to check on everything from pot plants to fridges. Details of the vast array of laws were quietly slipped out to MPs last Tuesday by the Home Office. The list includes 430 new powers of entry brought in by Labour ministers – a year after a report said there were only 266. The checks include whether POT PLANTS have pests or imported “passport” documents, or if HYPNOTISM is being practised illegally. Inspectors can demand...

Police need more evidence, state justices saySupporters of marijuana decriminalization celebrated Thursday's decision by the state Supreme Court restricting police from arresting passengers simply for being in a car smelling of pot.

... The United States is the only country to take the position that some police misconduct must automatically result in the suppression of physical evidence. The rule applies whether the misconduct is slight or serious, and without regard to the gravity of the crime or the power of the evidence. “Foreign countries have flatly rejected our approach,” said Craig M. Bradley, an expert in comparative criminal law at Indiana University. “In every other country, it’s up to the trial judge to decide whether police misconduct has risen to the level of requiring the exclusion of evidence.” But there are signs...

Schools may not strip-search students for drugs based on an unverified tip, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. Overturning two other rulings, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said an assistant principal at an Arizona middle school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old by ordering her to be strip-searched. He thought the honor student had prescription-strength ibuprofen; she did not. The 6-5 ruling by the San Francisco-based court reinstated a lawsuit that a divided three-judge circuit panel threw out last year. The lawsuit was brought by the parents of Savana Redding, who was an eighth-grader at Safford Middle...

WASHINGTON — More than two and a half years after the disclosure of President’s Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program set off a furious national debate, the Senate gave final approval on Wednesday afternoon to broadening the government’s spy powers and providing legal immunity for the phone companies that took part in the wiretapping program. The plan, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, marked one of Mr. Bush’s most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. And it represented a stinging defeat for opponents on the left who had urged Democratic leaders...

What prompted Pembroke Pines police to conduct a dawn paramilitary raid that ended with the June 12 shooting death of homeowner Vincent Hodgkiss? In its application for a narcotics search warrant, police cited an anonymous complaint of drug dealing, surveillance of high-turnover visitors and two searches of Hodgkiss' trash by detectives, who found scraps of paper with handwritten numbers and trace amounts of "green, leafy substance" that tested positive for marijuana. Police conducted the raid with its Special Response Team (similar to SWAT) two days after Broward Circuit Judge Dale Cohen approved the search warrant. As a result of the...

Getting FISA Wrong . . . Again By Andrew C. McCarthy National Review Online July 5, 2008 Originally published at web site: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NWFmYTZmNzYyNDhlN2ZjMDVlZGFjODdlYzRiOWZjNzY= A federal court in California has dismissed a civil lawsuit that alleged surveillance violations against a Muslim charity the government has formally designated as supporter of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Nevertheless, in his ill-conceived 56-page opinion, Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker, of the district court in San Francisco, gets to the right result only after concluding that Congress has the power to preempt the president’s constitutional authority. Judge Walker found that the 1978 FISA statute (the...

Sheriff's detectives conducted a proper search of the home of a youth pastor even without a warrant, a Manatee County judge ruled Thursday. The ruling shot down a defense challenge and now means prosecutors can use videotapes and hidden cameras seized in the voyeurism investigation last year. Authorities did not need a warrant to search the home of Bethel Baptist Church youth pastor Matthew C. Porter because a friend who had been house-sitting agreed to let detectives inspect Porter's home in Ellenton, Manatee County Judge George K. Brown Jr. determined. The detectives, the judge said, acted reasonably. Investigators say Porter,...

Holiday DUI suspects risk forced blood test Court's OK likely if breath exam is refused Wednesday, July 2, 2008 9:35 PM By Kathy Lynn Gray THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Suspected drunken drivers won't be able to "just say no" to blood-alcohol tests in Columbus over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Police have set up a "no-refusal weekend," meaning that anyone who refuses to take a breath-analysis test will face a blood test instead, courtesy of two local judges on call to sign warrants. Officers will take suspects to a local hospital to await the warrant and the blood draw. Ohio...