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The Supreme Court yesterday unanimously sided with Gun Owners of America in finding that the placement of a Global Positioning Device on an automobile constitutes a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Jones was written by Justice Antonin Scalia and follows GOA’s reasoning to throw out the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test which has been thought to be the dominant Fourth Amendment standard in recent years. The Obama Administration argued that because the police could theoretically follow Antoine Jones’ car, he had no “reasonable expectation of privacy,” and thus, placing a GPS device...

In a case that stemmed from an investigation by D.C. police and the FBI of a local drug dealer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that police across the country need a warrant if they want to track suspects using GPS monitors. In the ruling, which was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court found that even though the case involved a GPS unit that was attached to a car that was out in the open, it still constituted a "search" under the language of the Fourth Amendment: It is important to be clear about what occurred in this...

Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance. The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine the chemical composition of a material. And even though they don't travel far inside the body, there is great hope that the waves can be used to spot tumours near the surface...

Presidential hopeful Ron Paul says his rivals’ militant stances on “the defense of liberty” would make it difficult for him to support any of them for president should he not get the Republican nomination, because their positions would lead to bigger government. But the Texas congressman also told Fox News’ Neal Cavuto Wednesday that despite these concerns, he probably would not run as a third-party candidate. “I would have trouble with what I heard last night because it is almost opposite of the defense of liberty that I’m talking about,” Paul told Cavuto, referring to Tuesday night’s presidential debate. “I...

The idea of “safety” or “security” is a powerful tool in the collection of emerging dictatorial governments that are not yet able or willing to use outright force to crush the entire population into compliance with the freedom-robbing desires of the rulers of the state. How many freedoms and liberties have we already willingly given up for “security’s” sake? How much more burdensome is air travel in the wake of 9-11, because we simply had to crack down on dangerous, old ladies leaning on walkers and potential terrorist toddlers in diapers? Our blossoming police state is growing scarier by the...

Secret orders forcing Google and Sonic to release a WikiLeaks volunteer's email reveal the scale of US government snooping. Somewhere, a US government official is reading through a list of those who sent or received an email from Jacob Appelbaum, a 28-year-old computer science researcher at the University of Washington who volunteered for WikiLeaks. ... Appelbaum is a spokesman for Tor, a free internet anonymising software that helps people defend themselves against internet surveillance. He's spent five years teaching activists around the world how to install and use the service to avoid being monitored by repressive governments. It's exactly the...

In a case explicitly decided to set a precedent, the California Appellate court has determined police officers can rifle through your cellphone during a traffic violation stop. This is not the first time such a law has been under scrutiny. In April, the Blaze told you about the extraction devices police were using in Michigan to download the entire contents of your phone. Florida and Georgia are among the states that give no protection to a phone during a search after a violation has been committed. In particular, Florida law treats a smartphone as a “container” for the purposes of...

Government critics deserve their day in court. You wouldn't think Aaron Tobey and Donald Rumsfeld have much in common. Tobey is the guy who stripped down to his shorts at the Richmond, Virginia airport last December. Rumsfeld is the former Defense Secretary under George W. Bush. Tobey, who was protesting the invasive airport screening practices that have outraged a good portion of the traveling public, is a stickler for constitutional rights. Rumsfeld? Not so much. The two of them, however, are united by a common case: Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. The other day a federal appeals court said...

A federal appeals court ruling this week could significantly diminish public university religious groups' ability to restrict membership and leadership to students who agree with their teachings. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that San Diego State University's nondiscrimination policy for officially recognized campus groups is constitutional. The policy is based on a nondiscrimination policy used at all the schools in the California State University system. Two Christian groups sued SDSU in 2005, alleging the policy violated their free-speech and religious-freedom rights. For the groups to be recognized as official campus groups, they were required to allow all...

Last weekend, a Tennessee woman was arrested at the Nashville airport for disorderly conduct after she refused TSA security measures for her children. The woman didn’t want her two children to have to go through a whole-body-imaging scanner. When a Transportation Security Administration officer told her the machines were safe, she said, “I still don’t want someone to see our bodies naked.” She won’t be pleased with a ruling then out of the D.C. Circuit today. This morning, the federal court ruled that the “naked scans” of air travelers do not violate Americans’ constitutional rights. Privacy rights group EPIC had...

THIS spring was a rough season for the Fourth Amendment. The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime. In addition, Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers...

Sometimes big deals get little play, unless you follow social media. It seems some federal agents last week broke down a California man's door and removed him and his three children, ages 3, 7 and 11. According to News10/KXTV in Stockton, Calif., a SWAT team around 6 a.m. Tuesday broke down Kenneth Wright's door, removed him and his children, and searched the house. As it turns out, according to the report, they were from the U.S. Department of Education attempting to collect on his wife's defaulted student loan. "The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the...

It’s now up to Texas Gov. Rick Perry to rescue the nation’s travelers from the indignity of x-rated airport screening at the hands of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). On Tuesday, a state House of Representatives committee is scheduled to consider revised legislation holding blue-gloved bureaucrats criminally liable for grabbing the private parts of passengers without probable cause or consent. For the measure to proceed further, however, Mr. Perry would have to formally add it to the list of bills considered during the special session now under way.

In recent years, Texas Governor Rick Perry has made quite a name for himself as a champion of state sovereignty, as an outspoken supporter of the right to keep and bear arms, and as a proponent of reigning in unlawful searches by TSA agents.  But with the media now abuzz about the possibility of a Perry presidential run, I’m forced to wonder if these reputations are well-earned or if Governor Perry simply knows how to say the right things at the right time to stir up his political base. How many times during his decade-long reign as governor of Texas...

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) – Video of the SWAT raid and deadly shooting of former Marine Jose Guerena has raised many questions from 9 On Your Side viewers who wanted to know how much force police are legally allowed to use when serving a search warrant. 9 On Your Side Reporter Steve Nuñez sat down with Criminal Defense Attorney Michael Bloom to show him the raw footage of the raid. The Pima County Sheriff's Department released the video to the media on Thursday. "I'm sure everyone's reaction first of all, it's horrible," said Bloom as he watched SWAT officers fire 71 bullets...

VIDEO AT LINK A U.S. Marine who was killed when he was gunned down in his home near Tucson, Arizona, never fired on the SWAT team that stormed his house firing 70 times in a hail of bullets, a report has revealed. The revelation came as dramatic footage of the shooting was released, showing the armed team pounding down the door of Jose Guerena's home and opening fire. The father-of-two, who had served twice in Iraq, died on May 5 after the SWAT team descended on his home believing it was one of four houses associated with a drug smuggling...

Does America now qualify as a police state? And, if so, where do you — or will you — personally draw a hard line and say, "No! That is a law or a police order I refuse to obey"?As an anarchist, I view all states as police states, because every law is ultimately backed by police force against the body or property of a scofflaw, however peaceful he may be. I see only a difference of degree, not of kind. But even small differences in the degree of repression can be matters of life or death, and so they should...

The U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to House and Texas Senate leaders Tuesday -- reportedly in person -- threatening a shut-down of airports if HB 1937 is passed. The letter claims Rep. David Simpson's (R-Longview) anti-TSA-groping bill is against federal law and the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. We include the text of the DOJ's letter, as well as a portion of Simpson's reply, below.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Capitol Police in Indianapolis are investigating harassing phone calls and email messages to the Indiana Supreme Court following a recent contentious ruling regarding property rights. Police won't say how many calls and messages have been received or whether they're addressed to a specific justice. Court spokeswoman Kathryn Dolan told The Times of Munster the threats are mostly directed at police officers. Quantcast The state's highest court ruled Thursday that Indiana residents have no right to resist police making an unlawful police entry into their homes. In a 3-2 decision written by Justice Steven David, the court ruled that...

Officers may break in if they hear sounds and suspect that evidence is being destroyed, the justices say in an 8-1 decision. Justice Ginsburg dissents. The Supreme Court gave police more leeway to break into homes or apartments in search of illegal drugs when they suspect the evidence otherwise might be destroyed. Ruling in a Kentucky case Monday, the justices said that officers who smell marijuana and loudly knock on the door may break in if they hear sounds that suggest the residents are scurrying to hide the drugs. Residents who "attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame"...

COURT IGNORES U.S. CONSTITUTION AND 800 YEARS OF COMMON LAW The Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that Hoosiers do not have the right to resist unlawful entry of their homes by police. Think about it for a moment; the court overruled nearly 800 years of common law, dating back to the Magna Carta of 1215 – and the U.S. Constitution as well. Justice Steven David, writing for the court: If a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner has no right to stop the officer’s entry. “We believe a right...

The Fourth Amendment expressly imposes two requirements:All searches and seizures must be reasonable; and a warrant may notbe issued unless probable cause is properly established and the scope of the authorized search is set out with particularity. Although“ ‘searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are pre-sumptively unreasonable,’ ” Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U. S. 398, 403, this presumption may be overcome when “ ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a]warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,”

In a move that flies not only in the face of the U.S. Constitution but defies common law dating back to the Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that residents of the Hoosier state have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes. In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David, writing for the majority, expressed the view that a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and...

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes. In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry. "We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David...

People have no right to resist if police officers illegally enter their home, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in a decision that overturns centuries of common law. The court issued its 3-2 ruling on Thursday, contending that allowing residents to resist officers who enter their homes without any right would increase the risk of violent confrontation. If police enter a home illegally, the courts are the proper place to protest it, Justice Steven David said. "We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment...

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes. In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry.

The decision is Barnes v. State, and the Indiana Supreme Court divided 3–2. In this case, the officer had come to the home in response to a domestic violence call. He found the defendant, Barnes, outside. The officer and the defendant exchanged heated words, and the defendant started yelling at the officer. The officer threatened to arrest the defendant if he didn’t calm down, and the defendant threatened to have the officer arrested if he arrested him. At this point the defendant’s wife came outside, threw a duffel bag in the defendant’s direction, and told him to take the rest...

INDIANAPOLIS | Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes. In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer's entry. "We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David...

Educational video of a standoff between citizens in an RV who want to be left alone, exercising their 4th Amendment rights, and border "inspectors", looking for contraband fruit, who won't leave our heros alone, at the CA-AZ border. The drone chief "inspector" has the IQ of a broccoli.

(Credit: Matt Hickey/Cellebrite) The Michigan State Police have started using handheld machines called "extraction devices" to download personal information from motorists they pull over, even if they're not suspected of any crime. Naturally, the ACLU has a problem with this. The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information. The problem as the ACLU sees it, is that accessing a citizen's private phone information...

A Chicago-bound businessman traveling in an Amtrak sleeping car didn't expect to wake up in Omaha. That's where plain clothes Nebraska State Patrol Investigators boarded and knocked on the doors of four first-class passengers. Greg Travis of Bloomington, Indiana said, "It was a loud knock followed by questions. 'Where are you going! Who did you visit!' They shined a flashlight and I was in my pajamas." Travis said he saw two other groggy passengers in his sleeping car also talking to the investigators. "If I had my wits about me, I might have said, 'No I don't want you looking...

WASHINGTON — More than 60 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the police were not entitled to enter a residence without a warrant merely because they smelled burning opium. Related Times Topic: U.S. Supreme Court On Wednesday, at the argument of a case about what the police were entitled to do on smelling marijuana outside a Kentucky apartment, two justices voiced concerns that the court may be poised to eviscerate the older ruling. “Aren’t we just simply saying they can just walk in whenever they smell marijuana, whenever they think there’s drugs on the other side?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor...

Some months ago it was reported here that - despite all the hallabalu arising from Congress’ recent mandate that AMTRAK allow passengers to transport unloaded guns in checked luggage - it’s generally NOT a crime under federal and most states’ laws to carry loaded handguns on AMTRAK trains. Now . . . WMATA has publicly acknowledged that gun carry on the DC Metro system is not banned, but merely governed by the laws of each of the 3 member jurisdictions: Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

The images on television of children, the elderly, and other individuals who pose zero threat to our aviation security experiencing “pat-downs” by TSA officials at airports is disturbing. This issue became personal to me as I was forced into a pat-down and threatened that I would never get through security until I complied, and I now believe that these demeaning acts are unconstitutional. At O’Hare airport, returning to the east coast after the Thanksgiving holiday, I purposefully stood in the long line for regular metal detectors rather than the much shorter line of those willing to go through the full-body...

It's the solution that millions of American airline passengers have been searching for - how to avoid bodyscanners and intrusive pat-downs when they fly. Now one patient traveller has proved it is possible to bypass the high-level security measures in place at all airports, but only if you have time on your hands. Blogger Matt Kernan recorded his epic experience as he returned to North Kentucky International Airport in Cincinnati from Paris on Sunday.

Maybe it was the video of the three-year old getting molested, maybe it was the sexual assault victim having to cry her way through getting groped, maybe it was the father watching teenage TSA officers joke about his attractive daughter. 'Whatever it was, this issue didn’t sit right with me. We shouldn’t be required to do this simply to get into our own country.' As a result, Mr Kernan informed staff he did not want to go through the infamous Backscatter imaging machine. He was told he would have to undergo an invasive pat-down search, but again politely told staff...

“You don’t need to see his identification.” On November 21, 2010, I was allowed to enter the U.S. through an airport security checkpoint without being x-rayed or touched by a TSA officer.  This post explains how.Edit:  Minor edits for clarity.  I have uploaded the audio and it is available here. This past Sunday, I was returning from a trip to Europe.  I flew from Paris to Cincinnati, landing in Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.  As I got off my flight, I did all of the things that are normally requested from U.S. citizens returning from abroad.  I filled out the customs declarations, confirmed...

Mo McGowan, a former Assistant TSA Administrator and Director of Security Operations, admitted the TSA is violating the 4th Amendment. On Fox News, he said, “Nobody likes having their 4th Amendment violated going through a security line, but the truth of the matter is, uh, we're gonna have to do it.”

A Miami Transportation Security Administration screener was arrested this week after allegedly using an expandable police baton to beat up a co-worker in an airport parking lot. The TSA considers what to do about airport security.The reason for the assault: police said the victim and other TSA employees had been making fun of the size of the screener's genitals.

A Salisbury woman who was arrested in November 2009 after she refused a police officer’s order to go into her house while he was making a traffic stop nearby was found guilty Friday of resisting, obstructing or delaying an officer. She had been videotaping the traffic stop. Rowan County District Court Judge Beth Dixon found Felicia Laverne Gibson, 29, guilty and sentenced her to six months of probation and community service work. Gibson, through her attorney Jacob Sussman, of Charlotte, gave notice of appeal. Dixon found Gibson had interfered with the officer’s ability to do his job as he dealt...

When San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Murphy responded to a “shots fired” call in April 2008, he decided en route that he was going to make an arrest.      He did far more than that. Murphy and other deputies made an unwarranted entry into a home, and then into a locked gun safe.  Murphy's uncensored, darkly disturbing observations and behavior following his Code-3 arrival at the rural home of longtime SLO County resident Matt Hart were picked up by Murphy's and other deputies’ own recorders. Those recordings provide a rare, frighteningly revealing, behind-the-scenes perspective of how one local...

So how easy is it for police to take your stuff? Well, according to a new study by the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice, it looks to be about as simple as taking candy from a baby. The study details how police and prosecutors can take private property without even charging the owners with a crime. Often, law enforcement uses the profits from selling the property to fund their own budgets. According to the study, called "Policing for Profit," many state and federal civil asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement entities to take property related to suspected criminal activity. The owners...

When Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s deputies kicked down Juan Elijio Magallon’s door on the morning of May 23, 2009, the authorities lacked a search warrant, didn’t have probable cause and were in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Superior Court Judge Rick Brown ruled last week. By making this finding, Brown unleashed a much larger question that was grappled with yesterday in court: if the police illegally kick down a person’s door, what bits of information gathered as a result should be allowed to stand? The case has shed light on the breadth, or lack thereof, of...

Here's what I want to know. It's simple really. I would like someone who voted for Barack Obama to explain how his policies jive with the Constitution. Particularly I need to understand how the proposed health care bill and the corresponding taxes imposed on citizen's (well some of us anyway) don't infringe on my fourth amendment rights. For those of you who haven't read the Constitution (and I would venture that is most of Obama's supporters) the fourth amendment reads as follows: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches...

In June 2008, off-duty Air Force Staff Sgt. Matthew St. John was searched and detained for carrying a holstered gun in a movie theater in Alamogordo, New Mexico. But open carry is legal in New Mexico, so St. John sued the city, arguing that it had violated his Fourth Amendment rights. A federal court agreed, and in September 2009 the City of Alamogordo paid him $21,000 in damages and legal fees. The officers who detained St. John claimed they were acting in their legitimate role as “community caretakers” when they grabbed him by both arms and physically removed him from...

I spent twenty-two years serving in the Colorado criminal justice arena. I worked as a municipal police patrolman, a police detective, a patrol sergeant, and as a uniformed county sheriff’s deputy and detective. Following twenty years as a cop, I also spent two years on the other side of the Courtroom as an Investigator for the Colorado State Public Defender’s Office. So, I saw crime and punishment from both sides of the Courtroom. I spent my share of time at crime scenes gathering facts and evidence, then in Courts of Law, presenting the evidence and testifying under oath in trials....

Washington - The Supreme Court agreed today to hear an appeal from a Christian student group in San Francisco which refused to admit gays and lesbians and decide whether the group's right to religious liberty and freedom of association can trump a university's ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation. The case, to be heard next year, could set new rules for campus groups across the nation. The University of California's Hastings College of Law says its officially recognized student groups must be open to all of its students. The law school also has a general non-discrimination policy which applies...

Not only should we be careful in what we wish for, but we should be ever so diligent when drafting pro gun legislation. One of the greatest evils against the Bill of Rights is legislation that doesn't pass the constitutional test. This can happen even when the legislators have the best of intentions. Alaska police officers regularly disarm law abiding citizens, taking their firearms and running the serial numbers through the system. This in itself is a violation of the “fourth amendment”. No surprise here, officers that have taken an oath to uphold the constitution are regularly breaking this same...

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...