Posts Tagged fourth amendment

Texas Police Dept Refuses To Return Seized Firearms

From Bearing Arms:

China Grove, Texas is probably best known for being the “sleepy little town down around San Antone” immortalized by the Doobie Brothers in the 1970s, but the south Texas burg of about 1,200 people is making local headlines for the wrong reasons these days. According to one woman, the China Grove police improperly seized several firearms belonging to her and her husband almost four years ago, and despite the fact that no charges have ever been filed against the couple, they’ve been unable to get their property returned to them.

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Officers Association Against No-Knock Raids

From National Tactical Officers Association:

We can all agree that there is no easy answer, but there is a correct answer: No-knock search warrants, though well-intended, no longer pass the test of tactical science, risk mitigation practices, and liability-conscious decision-making.

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Gun Rights and Police Raids Are Incompatible

From Open Source Defense:

As more people become able exercise their gun rights, an ever-bigger percentage of people are going to have a gun on them or nearby when encountering police. And that means that in a raid (which are often indistinguishable from home invasions), or when there’s a strange knock on the door at night, people are going to use their gun for its purpose. That’s just a description of reality in a world of robust gun rights. So either that can be a death sentence for ≥1 of the people involved in the encounter, or police tactics can change.

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Oppose the Surveillance of the EARN IT Act

From EFF:

While Apple’s plan would have put the privacy and security of its users at risk, the EARN IT Act compromises security and free speech for everyone. The bill would create serious legal risk for business that hosts content—messages, photos stored in the cloud, online backups—and, potentially, even cloud-hosting sites like those using Amazon Web Services, unless they use government-approved scanning tools. 

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FBI Won’t Acknowledge Stingray Surveillance Tech

From MSN:

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union are fighting to uncover more about the FBI’s role in helping local police acquire powerful cellphone surveillance devices known widely as “stingrays.” The true scope of their use against Americans has, by design, remained a closely guarded secret for more than a decade. This is thanks to secrecy requirements devised by the federal government, which police departments and prosecutors have followed to an extreme.

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Colorado Court Rules Against 3 Month Long Surveillance

From Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled, in a case called People v. Tafoya, that three months of warrantless continuous video surveillance outside a home by the police violated the Fourth Amendment. We, along with the ACLU and the ACLU of Colorado, filed an amicus brief in the case.

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Senator Paul Rips FBI Director Over Russiagate

From Forbes:

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US Government Conspires With Big Tech To Spy On Americans

From The Federalist:

Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan demanded records and a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Thursday over the agency’s proposed use of third-party firms to spy on Americans.

“The Obama-Biden FBI spied on President Trump’s campaign in 2016, and now the Biden-Harris DHS is looking to use third-party contractors to circumvent the Constitution and spy on American citizens,” Jordan told The Federalist. “Every American, regardless of their political affiliation, should be weary of these types of attacks on our civil liberties.”

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Patriot Act Reform Fails By One Vote

From Ars Technica:

A majority of senators—59 out of 100—supported the amendment. But under the Senate’s dysfunctional rules, it takes a 60-vote supermajority to end debate on a proposal like this and move to a vote. So even though a majority of senators supported the amendment, it did not become part of the reauthorization bill.
Four senators—Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) missed the vote. The amendment would have passed if any of them had voted “yes.”

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Gun Control Leads To More Dead Innocents

From The American Conservative:

As I reported in American Conservative here and here, a Montgomery County SWAT team launched an unprovoked attack on the Lemp family home at 4:30 a.m. on March 12.  Lemp was fatally wounded by the first shots that the police fired through his bedroom window. His family says he was sleeping in bed with his pregnant girlfriend at the time.
 Police claim that they received an anonymous tip two months earlier that Lemp possessed firearms. The police department asserted  Lemp was prohibited from owning firearms due to a juvenile conviction but there are apparently zero court records or other records to support that justification.  Regardless of Lemp’s juvenile history, there was no evidence that he posed an imminent threat justifying a frontal assault that included throwing flash-bang explosive devices into the family home. 

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NJ Security Guard Arrested For Legal Gun

From Reason:

Every petty excuse for the police to bother you is a loose trigger for further injustice. Roosevelt Twyne, a 25-year-old security guard who is African American, is learning this in New Jersey.
Pulled over last month on his way home from work in Roselle Park, New Jersey, for having tinted windows on his car, Twyne informed the police he had his work-related weapon in his possession. The police arrested him, claiming he was carrying both an illegally transported gun and illegal hollow-point ammunition.

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Red Flag Law Abuse Has Started, As Predicted

From Bearing Arms:

Backers of Colorado’s new red flag law aren’t saying much about the first high profile abuse of the Extreme Risk Protection Order process and for good reason. The case of Susan Holmes has revealed that not only will some individuals try to abuse the system, but the state’s mental health system is likely in need of an overhaul as well.

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NM Sheriff Will Not Enforce Red Flag Law

From Cam & Company:

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Kentucky To Consider Red Flag Laws

From NRA-ILA:

On Friday, November 22nd, the Kentucky state Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary will consider so called “red-flag laws.” Though no legislation has been introduced, such laws usually allow for Second Amendment rights to be suspended and firearms seized without due process. Please contact leadership of the General Assembly, as well as the committee, and urge them to oppose these firearm confiscation schemes.

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Searches Of Travelers’ Devices Unconstitutional

From Electronic Frontier Foundation:

In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional.

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