When police pulled over a young driver for driving without headlights, he immediately asked for a lawyer. Was asking for a lawyer under such circumstances enough to give the police officer reasonable suspicion to search the car? That’s the question making the rounds in the legal blogosphere this week after Crime Scene KC picked up…
Category: Surveillance
Judge Tosses NSA Spy Cases
David Kravets has more on Judge Walker’s decision in two cases involving domestic surveillance: A federal judge is dismissing lawsuits accusing the government of teaming with the nation’s telcos to funnel Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision was a major blow to the two suits…
Over Redaction in Audit of FBI’s Use of Illegal Exigent Letters
Kurt Opsahl of EFF comments: Earlier this week, the DOJ’s Inspector General issued a heavily redacted report about the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit (CAU), which found “shocking” violations, including embedded telecom employees providing customer phone records in response to post-it notes. While the underlying violations are egregious enough, the report itself is problematic because it…
Obama continues morphing into Bush
Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers has an article on how Obama’s administration is following in the same secretive and civil liberties-busting footsteps of the Bush administration: Although the FBI has acknowledged it improperly obtained thousands of Americans’ phone records for years, the Obama administration continues to assert that the bureau can obtain them without any…