Tag Archives: fourth amendment rights

EFF protects phone-in prescriptions from illegal wiretap

Ok, well that’s really only half of it. I think most of us like the government doing it’s best to fight crime and the likes, but not at the destruction of US citizens Fourth Amendment rights. Find a better way to do it. The government currently uses a device called a pen/trap to collect numbers dialed from a telephone, suppose this device captures your voicemail passcode, or SS# with other information when filling a prescription, or even information you have entered into a telephone chat service. Does the government really need to know that their intelligence mark, refills his erectile disfunction medication frequently and is also looking to chat with an 18 F from 90210? Sure if they were trying to entrap him/her.

The EFF filed a brief recently, which argued that in order for the government to collect any content of a telephone call, including the numbers dialed on a phone keypad, it must first have a warrant. I honestly cannot imagine the vast array of information big brother has gathered illegally, from telephone and internet pen/traps.

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More on pen/traps here.

the 4th.

i think those with cameras should start a flickr page of all the police officers they can snap pictures of, and tag them with their badge numbers. And when they threaten to take our cameras, and they beat us into submission, we sue.

ridiculous: http://thomashawk.com/2005/08/right-to-bear-cameras.html

from boingboing
Last month a federal judge awarded $35,000 in compensatory and $6000 in punitive damages to a man state troopers arrested for video taping them.

Given the Utah rave case and the Oakland police stop reported today, this seems like an important decision because it makes it clear that citizens are free to video law enforcement in action.

The ruling finds violations of the plaintiff’s first and fourth amendment rights. It states “The activities of the police, like those of other public officials, are subject to public scrutiny…Videotaping is a legitimate means of gathering information for public dissemination and can often provide cogent evidence, as it did in this case. In sum, there can be no doubt that the free speech clause of the Constitution protected Robinson as he videotaped the defendants on October 23, 2002….Moreover, to the extent that the troopers were restraining Robinson from making any future videotapes and from publicizing or publishing what he had filmed, the defendants’ conduct clearly amounted to an unlawful prior restraint upon his protected speech….We find that defendants are liable under § 1983 for violating Robinson’s Fourth Amendment right to be protected from an unlawful seizure…”

Thank you 4th amendment!

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