Throughout the past ten years, the FBI has at varying points in time maintained a particularly close relationship with Best Buy officials and used the company’s Geek Squad employees as informants. But the FBI refuses to confirm or deny key information about how the agency may potentially circumvent computer owners’ Fourth Amendment rights.
In the last several weeks, the term “FISA” has been widely used in discussion regarding the investigations into whether or not the campaign of Donald Trump was involved with Russian agencies in a collusion to win the White House. House Representative Devon Nunes compiled a summary document eliciting the abuses of the FISA warrant process, created through either knowing or unknowing biases against Candidate Trump, and the Democrat Party leadership just had their own “memo’s” declassification request refused, in an intentional effort to frame President Trump as “non-transparent.”
Opinion — Hidden beneath the controversy stirred up last week by the publication of a book called Fire and Fury, a highly critical insider’s view of the Trump White House that the president has not only denounced on national television but also tried to prevent from being published and distributed, are the efforts of the Trump administration and congressional leadership to bypass the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
Here is the back story.
Ever since Edward Snowden helped reveal the true extent of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) massive spying program, U.S. politicians have attempted to “fix” the program’s gross violations of the Fourth Amendment with legislation.
A federal appeals court ruled in favor of an officer in Colleyville, Texas, who used “excessive force” against an 18-year-old woman after police shot and killed her father. The court asserted the officer could not have known force was “clearly unreasonable” in this situation, given the “lack of guiding precedent,” and granted him immunity for his actions.
A federal court ruled the United States government is not violating a citizen’s Fifth Amendment rights when they require a citizen to apply his or her fingerprints to a sensor so authorities can access a device.
The government sought authorization to “seize” four residents so their fingers could be applied to Apple devices in a home in order to uncover evidence related to a child pornography case.
Attorneys haggled Friday in the D.C. Superior Court over whether the government should be allowed to proceed with search warrants for Facebook accounts associated with Inauguration Day protests, and if so, what information it should be allowed to access.
During an afternoon hearing, U.S. Attorney John Borchert said the federal government wanted to conduct a “front to back” search of the accounts. The government, he said, would scroll through the account information it requested – including private messages, pictures and news feeds – to find what it needs.
Bob Harte displays the indoor garden his family cultivates. (AP/Orlin Wagner)
Barack Obama, accompanied by, from left, Office of National Intelligence Director James Clapper, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State John Kerry, walks away from the podium after speaking at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Va. Dec. 17, 2015. (AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Activists sit down in front of a truck carrying military equipment thus taking control of the Port of Olympia entrance for the second time in 5 days. (Photo: Phoebe Blanding/olywip.org)
The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment Tuesday against members of an anti-war group who claimed civilian employees of the Army violated their constitutional rights by infiltrating the group and facilitating their arrest.
