GREAT WIN FOR THE 4TH AMENDMENT!!! Cell Phone Tower Data protected!

Court: Warrantless Cell Tracking Illegal

Robert Galbraith/Reuters

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined people have an expectation of privacy in their movements and that the cell tower data was part of that. As such, obtaining the records without a search warrant is a violation of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, the judges ruled.
"While committing a crime is certainly not within a legitimate expectation of privacy, if the cell site location data could place him near those scenes, it could place him near any other scene," the judges wrote. "There is a reasonable privacy interest in being near the home of a lover, or a dispensary of medication, or a place of worship, or a house of ill repute."
The ruling does not block investigators from obtaining the records — which show which calls are routed through specific towers — but simply requires a higher legal showing of probable cause to obtain a search warrant rather than a less-strict court order.
"The court soundly repudiates the government's argument that merely by using a cellphone, people somehow surrender their privacy rights," said ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, who argued the case.
The U.S. Supreme Court, while not yet ruling on cellphone tower records, in 2012 decided that attachment of GPS devices to suspects' vehicles also constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. The justices did not, however, decided that investigators must always obtain a search warrant.
The 11th Circuit decision, which relied heavily on the GPS decision, applies in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. The judges said other circuit courts had considered similar arguments, but not in a criminal case. Ultimately the issue will likely have to be resolved by the Supreme Court.
The ruling came in the Miami case of Quartavious Davis, who is serving a 162-year prison sentence for a string of violent armed robberies. The judges refused to overturn his convictions and sentence over the cellphone tracking issue. They applied a "good faith" exception preventing authorities from being punished for relying on a law later found unconstitutional.
The cellphone tower data used at trial placed Davis near six of the armed robberies for which he was ultimately convicted.
The appeals court did agree to a separate argument by Davis that his sentence was improperly enhanced for "brandishing" a firearm, sending the case back to Miami district court for resentencing on that issue alone.

Data surveillance centers- Are they violating your right to privacy?

Data surveillance centers: Crime fighters or 'spy machines?'

By Thom Patterson, CNN (CNN) -- Some residents of Oakland, California, fear their community is creating a monster. The city calls it the Domain Awareness Center, but opponents call it a "spy machine" and a potential "tool of injustice." Known as "the DAC," it's a proposed central surveillance facility where authorities can monitor the Port of Oakland and the city's airport to protect against potential terrorism. But the broader issue of centralized data surveillance poses serious privacy questions for millions of people in cities around the globe. In March, more than 100 worried Oakland residents waited past midnight to complain about it during a City Council meeting. Standing at the mic, Maya Shweiky, a self-described public school teacher and Muslim, warned lawmakers their proposal would be used to "discriminate against minorities and perpetuate racial, religious and political profiling." While the council voted on the proposal, rowdy protesters began chanting, "No! No! No! No!" Council members have proposed expanding the DAC to add live, 24/7 data streams from closed circuit traffic cameras, police license plate readers, gunshot detectors and other sources from all over the entire city of Oakland.   The danger, say opponents, is putting all these data resources into one place. "If you need to go to four different locations to track someone's movements across town, you're not going to do it unless you have a good reason," said Linda Lye of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. "But when you can do it with the press of a button because it's all at your fingertips, you'll end up doing it based on your idle curiosity." That, Lye said, creates a situation ripe for abuse. Oakland represents just one battleground in a fiery debate about how cities should be using so-called "Big Data," especially aggregated video and other types of surveillance. City closed-circuit TV cameras performed famously when they helped identify suspected terrorists in London in 2005 and in Boston last year.   But the issue has progressed far beyond the power of a few hundred video cameras and streetlight posts. Community surveillance 2.0 is now all about huge data mash-ups and incredible software that quickly sorts through mountains of information. Bottom line: A relatively small number of people have easy access to data that can track your whereabouts. In many cities, cameras mounted on police patrol cars gather video of millions of license plates. That data that can be used to track vehicles, possibly yours. Add traffic cameras to the mix. Then include cameras at bus stops, airports and train stations. How about cameras owned by schools and private security companies?   The key to using all this information is the data-mining software that can easily and effectively rifle through it.   Cities leading the way in video data collecting include London -- an early and strong adopter of widespread camera surveillance. The UK reportedly has 5.9 million CCTV cameras nationwide. For every 11 British citizens, there's one CCTV camera, according to Salon. Nice, France, has been expanding its surveillance center, which is projected to eventually count one camera for every 500 residents. As Rio de Janeiro hosts the World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, the city plans to make heavy use of its IBM-designed Operations Center, which combines video and other data from 30 agencies including traffic cameras, subways and even weather satellites. The network includes more than 550 cameras, 400 employees and 60 different layers of data streamed from citywide sensors. Mayor Pedro Junqueira says the center helps emergency teams warn residents in landslide-prone areas when to evacuate during heavy rainstorms.   The center also takes credit for a rapid response to an emergency after a truck toppled a pedestrian bridge, blocking lanes on a major highway. Traffic was back to normal within nine hours.   In New York, a company called Placemeter is using feeds from hundreds of traffic video cameras to study 10 million pedestrian movements each day. It's using that data to help businesses learn how to market to pedestrian consumers. Placemeter also says it wants to use the data to help consumers with information such as when to visit your neighborhood coffee bar when the line is shorter. Placemeter says it doesn't store the video, nor does their analysis involve facial recognition.   Lessons from Boston Last year's Boston bombings investigation showed how fast police were able to sift through mountains of surveillance data. After London's terrorist attacks in 2005, it took thousands of investigators weeks to painstakingly analyze all the CCTV footage. Eight years later in Boston, the FBI was able to release blurry images of two suspects in just three days.   But the facial recognition data tools used in the Boston probe wasn't perfect. Images of the two suspects were available in public data bases, but the computers that searched that data missed them, CNN's Tom Foreman reported last year. Security analysts widely admit facial recognition technology is not yet good enough to spot a suspect in a crowd.   Studies trying to determine the crime-fighting effectiveness of cameras have been inconclusive. According to the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University in Ontario, urban surveillance systems have not been proved to have any effect on deterring criminals. But a study from the U.S. Justice Department says it depends on the circumstances. Sometimes cameras can be a "potentially useful tool for preventing crimes" the study says, "when actively monitored." Meanwhile, U.S. communities are taking steps to make their surveillance more robust. -- Chicago: When the transit authority put more cameras in rail stations, crime went down, according to CNN affiliate WGN. -- Dayton, Ohio: Police plan a new crime fighting strategy that includes 27 video cameras placed downtown, according to the Dayton Daily News. -- Sacramento, California: The sheriff has asked homeowners and businesses to register their security cameras on the department's website. Investigators would contact camera owners located near crime scenes to search their video for potential evidence, according to CNN affiliate KCRA.   Even in tiny Chadbourn, North Carolina -- population about 2,000 -- CNN affiliate WECT reports they're talking about putting a camera down at the local Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Cities looking for guidelines aimed at safeguarding surveillance centers from privacy abuses might look to The European Forum for Urban Security, which suggests putting systems into place that include mechanisms for transparency, independent oversight and accountability.   Privacy safeguards are being put in place in Menlo Park, California, where leaders recently passed a law requiring all data captured by automated license plate readers to be destroyed after six months unless it's part of an investigation.   The whole issue is "very explosive" and the Oakland City Council recognizes this, said the ACLU's Lye. At the March meeting, after so many residents expressed their concerns, the council voted to curtail the scope of the DAC, limiting surveillance to just the port and the airport. The vote was 5-4. "There will be efforts in the future to expand the DAC to include city-based surveillance systems," Lye warned.   Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has promised to look into what privacy safeguards might be needed before trying again to expand the scope of the surveillance center. Quan, who favors the DAC, told the San Francisco Chronicle: "This is obviously an issue that is splitting the country."

Two Stings in One Week for LCSO- Drug UnderCover Operation Nets 8 Arrests in Fort Myers

Drug sting nets eight drug dealers in Fort Myers

Michael Braun, mbraun@news-press.com

 

 

 

Thirty drug dealers in a neighborhood notorious for drug sales were targeted by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office Thursday with warrants served on nine homes, eight people arrested and 22 others sought.

Operation Manor Meltdown, a three-month undercover narcotics investigation, was highlighted by the Lee sheriff’s office Thursday afternoon.

Sheriff’s office commander Matt LeClair said the operation started after 2 p.m. and by 3:30 had nabbed eight of the 30 drug dealers sought in Pine Manor, an area just south of Page Field and bordered by U.S. 41 and Summerlin Road.

LeClair said the prevalent drug being sold was cocaine but heroin, marijuana and pills were bought during the operation.“The nine residences we served search warrants on we made buys on,” he said. “And we made some buys on the street.”

LeClair said the operation’s result made a dent in the county as far as sellers go.
“But thirty sellers in one neighborhood is huge, extremely huge,” he said. “There is going to be an impact starting tonight. This is still a very active investigation.” Lt. Jeff Dektas, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said, “If you keep coming back we will continue to lock you up, it’s that simple.”

LeClair said the sheriff’s office wanted to let the public know it was taking a pro-active stance in Pine Manor and throughout the county.

“This neighborhood is notorious for drug sales,” LeClair said, adding that when he started with the sheriff’s office working that area 24 years ago it was a drug scene. “We still have a problem, but the sheriff is dedicated to this and will aggressively attack it,” he said, The investigation is the second one in Pine Manor in the past year. Last October the sheriff’s office conducted Operation Mind Your Manor and made drug-related arrests.

Connect with this reporter: MichaelBraunNP (Facebook) @MichaelBraunNP (Twitter)

Operation Manor Meltdown
Arrested (as of Thursday)
• Jerry Speed, 22
• Jadaris Banks, 23
• James Pierce, 23
• Willie Baskins, 23
• Reinaldo Cortez, 23
• Lindsey Hollins, 33
• Milton Thomas, 45
• Lisa Benjamin, 50

Sex Sting Operations are not as Open-and-Shut as Law Enforcement Would lead You to Believe

Online sex predator sting nets 24 arrests in Lee County

• By JACOB CARPENTER

 

Josue Cardosa arrived at a house Monday, expecting to meet 14-year-old "Liz," the girl who posted an online personal ad titled "Get Me Pregnant W4M."

As Cardosa, 22, of San Carlos Park, would learn after deputies rushed and handcuffed him, finding a condom in his pocket, "Liz" was an undercover agent and the real poster of the perversely titled personal.

Cardosa and two other south Lee County residents were among the 24 men arrested in the past week as part of an online sexual predator sting disclosed Tuesday by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.

Between May 27 and Monday, investigators say the two dozen men arrived at an undisclosed location, expecting to meet teenage girls, only to find deputies ready to make an arrest. Those from south Lee County were Cardosa; 30-year-old Jose Pacheco, of San Carlos Park; and 20-year-old Caleb Barnhouse, of south Fort Myers.

Lee County sheriff’s officials said the sting, three months in the making and titled "Operation Safe Summer," used online ads, chat rooms and social media sites to locate men looking for sex with underage girls. In each case, online and text conversations turned sexual and a meet-up was arranged. When the men arrived, deputies initiated the takedown.

"We not only search for people out there on the streets, but we’re on the Internet, the phone lines, everywhere we need to be to catch predators," Lee County sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Dektas said.

Sheriff’s officials called the online and text messages "very graphic," with the suspects describing "horrible" acts they intended to commit.

Online sex stings have become commonplace across the country in recent years, aimed at taking potential predators offline.

In October 2012, "Operation Spiderweb" netted 40 arrests, at least 31 of which resulted in convictions or plea agreements. (Resolutions for two of the 30 cases couldn’t be found.)

Among those successfully prosecuted: Alain Guevara, of Lehigh Acres, serving a 3 ½ year prison term; Gary Hall, of Cape Coral, scheduled for release from prison in 2019; and William Nockengost, of Cape Coral, early in a 19-year sentence on solicitation and attempted sexual battery charges.

But online sex predators stings haven’t been without legal challenges, evidenced by the seven men arrested by Lee County deputies in "Operation Spiderweb" who were acquitted by a jury, had their charges dropped or were never formally charged.

In one case, prosecutors dropped charges after it became clear a Collier County man didn’t know the age of the teen he was supposedly soliciting. In another case, law enforcement offered to give a defendant gas money to meet them, leading to accusations of entrapment, a motion to dismiss and, ultimately, the dropping of charges.

Danielle O’Halloran, a Fort Myers-based lawyer who represented one of the seven defendants, said "there were some problems and issues with the police work" in "Operation Spiderweb" that led to the legal issues.

"Law enforcement is making a movement to get these sex predators off the street, and everybody should appreciate that. I appreciate that," O’Halloran said. "However, you should make sure you’re protecting the rights of people who aren’t doing anything illegal online. You have to look at these cases very closely, and I think it’s not as open-and-shut as law enforcement would lead you to believe."

Lee County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tony Schall noted law enforcement’s burden to make an arrest is probable cause, while prosecutors face the higher burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

"Would we like to see 100 percent prosecuted? Of course," Schall said. "But we respect what they move forward with and what they don’t."

Regardless of legal outcomes, the recent arrests are a reminder of the potential dangers lurking online, sheriff’s Lt. James Amrich said.

"The best advice to give is as a parent, you need to monitor what your children are doing, both on their smartphones and other media devices," Amrich said.

Tennessee brings back electric chair

By ERIK SCHELZIG
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Tennessee has decided how it will respond to a nationwide scarcity of lethal injection drugs for death-row inmates: with the electric chair.
Republican Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law Thursday allowing the state to electrocute death row inmates in the event prisons are unable to obtain the drugs, which have become more and more scarce following a European-led boycott of drug sales for executions.
Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the electric chair legislation in April, with the Senate voting 23-3 and the House 68-13 in favor of the bill.
Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to enact a law to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option.
"There are states that allow inmates to choose, but it is a very different matter for a state to impose a method like electrocution," he said. "No other state has gone so far."
Dieter said he expects legal challenges to arise if the state decides to go through with an electrocution, both on the grounds of whether the state could prove that lethal injection drugs were not obtainable and constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
A Haslam spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that the governor had signed the measure Thursday evening, but offered no further comment.
Republican state Sen. Ken Yager, a main sponsor of the electric chair measure, said in a recent interview that he introduced the bill because of "a real concern that we could find ourselves in a position that if the chemicals were unavailable to us that we would not be able to carry out the sentence."
The decision also comes as lethal injection is receiving more scrutiny as an execution method, especially after last month's botched execution in Oklahoma. In the Oklahoma case, inmate Clayton Lockett's vein apparently collapsed and he suffered a fatal heart attack 43 minutes after the process began.
Concerns about lethal injection have risen at a time when Tennessee and many states - including Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas - obtain execution drugs in secret from unidentified compounding pharmacies. Death penalty opponents say the secrecy raises the risk of something going wrong.
Haslam's signing of the electric chair bill Thursday also came on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a rare last-minute stay of an execution for death row inmate Russell Bucklew in St. Louis. The justices directed a lower court to take another look at the case.
The Supreme Court did not specify its reasons, leaving open the question of whether the ruling shows a growing weariness of lethal injection in general or trepidation specifically about Bucklew's medical condition, which affects his veins.
As for the electric chair, a Vanderbilt University poll released this week found that 56 percent of registered voters in Tennessee support its use, while 37 percent are against it.
Previous Tennessee law gave inmates who committed crimes before 1999 the choice of whether they wanted to die by electric chair or lethal injection. The last inmate to be electrocuted was Daryl Holton, a Gulf War veteran who killed his three sons and a stepdaughter with a high-powered rifle in Shelbyville garage in 1997. He requested the electric chair in 2007.
A provision to apply the change to prisoners already sentenced to death has also raised a debate among legal experts.
Nashville criminal defense attorney David Raybin, who helped draft Tennessee's death penalty law nearly 40 years ago, has said lawmakers may change the method of execution but they cannot make that change retroactive. To do so would be unconstitutional, he said.
Supporters of the bill requested a legal opinion from state Attorney General Bob Cooper, who said the law would pass constitutional muster, but there was no guarantee it would not be challenged in court.
Tennessee has 74 prisoners on death row. Sidney Porterfield, who at 71 was the oldest inmate on Tennessee's death row, died of natural causes this week. Nine others have died of natural causes since 2000, while one committed suicide. Six inmates have been executed during that time frame, the most recent in 2010.
Billy Ray Irick, who was convicted of murdering a 7-year-old Knoxville girl he was babysitting in 1985, is the next death row inmate scheduled to be executed, on Oct. 7.
Thirty-two states have the death penalty, and all of them rely at least in part on lethal injection. Fewer than a dozen regularly carry out executions, among them Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia and Texas, which leads the country. The federal government also uses lethal injection but rarely carries out executions.
The Supreme Court has never declared a method of execution unconstitutional on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual. It upheld the firing squad in 1879, the electric chair in 1890 and lethal injection in 2008.
The court made it clear over the years that the Eighth Amendment prohibits inflicting pain merely to torture or punish an inmate, drawing a distinction between a method like electrocution and old European practices such as drawing and quartering. The Constitution prohibits "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," the court said in 1976.
Nonetheless, U.S. states and the federal government have updated execution methods several times in efforts to find more humane ways to put condemned criminals to death.
First used by New York State in 1890, the electric chair was employed throughout the 20th century to execute hundreds and is still an option in eight states. Since 1976, 158 inmates have been executed by electrocution. It was considered humane when it was first introduced but has resulted in many horrific executions over the years.

An interesting idea on how to encourage a change in criminals instead of just punishment

Italian prisoners get cut sentences for reading as UK 'book ban' continues

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A prisoner reads a book in his cell at HMP (Her Majesty's Prison) Pentonville

Getty Images

Regional council finds novel solution for education and overcrowding

Lizzie Dearden 

 

As the row over the Government’s ban on prisoners receiving books and other parcels continues, inmates in Italy are being rewarded with cut sentences for reading.  The regional council of Calabria, in southern Italy, has approved a bill to reduce jail time for three days for each book read.
It would be capped at 48 days in one year – amounting to 16 books in 12 months.
According to local newspaper Corriere della Sera, inmates’ progress would be tracked by prison officers to stop abuse of the system.
Calabria's culture representative, Mario Caligiuri, hopes it will increase reading as well as free up space in the area’s prisons.
He said: “Reading is an extraordinary antidote to unhappiness and promotes awareness and social and personal redemption.”
According to the Council of Europe’s annual prison report, the country has the second-worst prison overcrowding in Europe, coming behind Serbia.
The policy was inspired by a similar system in Brazil known as “Redemption through Reading”.
It has been approved by the regional government and will be debated in the Italian parliament.
The UK government’s ban on parcels being sent into prisons sparked outrage earlier this year.
Although books are still available in libraries and to be bought online, they cannot be sent in by family members and friends because of regulations aimed to cut drug use.
The poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, was among those protesting against the move, which she said “hurt the soul of the country”.
In an open letter, the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, defended the policy by emphasising the need to stop smuggling.
“Neither I nor any other Minister have made any policy changes specifically about the availability of books in prisons,” he wrote.
“Our prison staff fight a constant battle to prevent illicit items, such as drugs, extremist materials, mobile phones, SIM cards and pornography getting into our prisons. "
He said the arrival of unknown parcels undermined the efforts and cited examples of drugs and weapons concealed in shoes and other everyday items.
The change also aimed to control access to “privileges” in prison, like wearing non-institutional clothes and going to the gym, and ensure they were linked to rehabilitation efforts.
Campaign group the Prison Reform Trust was among those opposing the change to regulations last year.
The director, Juliet Lyon, said: “These new mean and petty prison rules just add stress and strain while doing nothing to promote rehabilitation and personal responsibility.”
Necessary items for health, religion and communication can be allowed as long as the "potential risk to security" is considered but the changes effectively outlawed gifts, cards, clothes and other basic items.
The only guaranteed parcel is a “one-off” immediately after conviction.

20th Judicial Circuit State Attorney and Public Defender won't face opposition in this year's election

State attorney, public defender won't face election opposition

Judicial races rarely get a lot of attention, in part because candidates for judge are extremely limited on how far they can go discussing issues they may face in court.
But judges still must stand for election, and with the close of qualifying for those and a few other seats Friday, the ballot line-up is clear.
No surprise in state's attorney Steve Russell and public defender Kathy Smith re-election without opposition. Incumbents rarely have challengers in the 20^th judicial circuit, which includes Lee, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades counties.
Russell followed Joe D'Alessandro to the post, winning election first in 2002; D'Alessandro was appointed to the seat when the new circuit was formed in 1969-- making it Florida's newest circuit, and also the largest geographically---and never faced serious opposition. There have been more public defenders, mostly due to retirement and career changes; Smith was first elected to the post in 2008.
While circuit judge races in other parts of Florida have become spirited contests, they've also been traditionally lower-profile in Southwest Florida, with few attorneys willing to challenge a sitting judge whose performance has stayed unscathed.
Still, one attorney, Steven Leskovich, filed to run against incumbent Judge Amy Hawthorne. Hawthorne was chosen by Gov. Rick Scott from a pool of applicants to fill a vacancy a couple of years ago, and faces her first election. Leskovich said there was "no particular reason" that led him to file to run against her, but he also mentioned that she was first chosen through the appointment process.
Leskovich's filing papers list a couple of home addresses in and outside the circuit, but he said he now lives in Punta Gorda and also owns a home in Sarasota County. He also filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 and business bankruptcy about a year ago, but said those issues have been resolved.
The bankruptcies were the effect of a former partner who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the business, and caused additional problems through identity theft, Leskovich said. Filing for bankruptcy seemed the best way to keep the practice going and pay employees, he said, and now he has first-hand experience in dealing with those kinds of problems.
One other judge race will be on the ballot: attorneys Robert Branning and Mary Evans, both from Fort Myers, are vying to fill a vacancy created by Judge Edward Volz's departure.
Branning's name is already familiar to many voters partly because he ran unsuccessfully for judge a few years ago. Evans has already raised eyebrows by having campaign signs out in Fort Myers, although city codes prohibit the signs more than 60 days before the election.
Signs in road rights-of-way---which is generally between the road and sidewalk---are prohibited at any time.
Fort Myers code officials say they're busy with such complaints, including retrieval of signs from the special congressional primary that are still up despite the requirement that they be removed within five days of the election.