Stephen Majors of the Associated Press reports: Police officers must obtain a search warrant before scouring the contents of a suspect’s cell phone unless their safety is in danger, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Tuesday on an issue that appears never to have reached another state high court or the U.S. Supreme Court. The…
Category: Surveillance
Privacy challenge to data-storage law reaches German constitutional court
A controversial law forcing communications companies to keep records of customers’ phone and internet use for six months was to be scrutinised on Tuesday by the constitutional court after 34,000 people lodged appeals against the law. Germany’s highest court, based in Karlsruhe in the state of Baden-Württemberg, was to examine 60 separate legal questions regarding…
Hackers declare war on international forensics tool
Dan Goodin reports: Hackers have released software they say sabotages a suite of forensics utilities Microsoft provides for free to hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the globe. Decaf is a light-weight application that monitors Windows systems for the presence of COFEE, a bundle of some 150 point-and-click tools used by police to collect digital…
Where does GPS tracking go from here?
Orin Kerr’s commentary on GPS surveillance and the Fourth Amendment has seemingly inspired John Wesley Hall, Jr. of FourthAmendment.com to offer his own commentary: My personal view is not far off, but with a caveat: United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983), and United States v. Karo, 468 U.S. 705 (1984), two beeper tracking…