RIP Fourth Amendment

[phantom power]

"Parallel construction" means never having to say you're sorry:

We’ve known for some time that police departments sometimes keep secret their surveillance methods, even from courts and defendants in criminal trials. But thanks to the ACLU, we now have a crystal clear picture of just how often one police department employs "parallel construction" to hide from the public and sometimes even criminal defendants where evidence used against them really comes from.

Newly disclosed court documents provide new insight into the domestic use of one particularly creepy surveillance technology: stingray cell phone sniffers. The devices act like cell phone towers, forcing all phones within range to connect to them instead of to the phone company’s towers, enabling law enforcement to track people’s locations and even intercept their cell phone traffic. Police departments, the Department of Justice, and the corporation that manufactures the stingray, Harris Corporation, have gone to great lengths to keep secret how often and in what ways law enforcement has been using the tool domestically.

This concept was derived from the notion that in order to protect confidential informants, police agencies could create a different provenance for probable cause. I don't pretend to understand why the courts have allowed this to run amock but they have. Basically law enforcement is now doing whatever it wants to track people's every move and then creating a false record to prove probable cause, of which even the court is unaware. It's a neat trick. Like this one:

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

...

There are many ways to circumvent the constitution if someone is clever enough to create them ...

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/rip-fourth-amendment.html

[Leme]

1. I am kidding...I want one, bet they are available (or soon ) nt

[villager]

2. Too bad we can't get anyone in the Oval Office willing to actually defend the Constitution

It's something I hope for.

[Squinch]

3. Really, it's time to go old school. Bring back pay phones.

[Michigander_Life]

4. Help me understand what is really going on here...

These agencies are using an invasive, questionable technology to locate people involved in criminal activity, and once located, they basically start a legitimate criminal investigation and completely fail to mention the shady methods they used to discover the law breaker in the first place?

That sounds shameful.

What happens when a major rapist or violent offender is apprehended based on this kind of unconstitutional program, only to be released to victimize more people because the evidence is thrown out?

[pscot]

5. This was a bastard child

of the War on Drugs.