constitution

Florida Judge Dissolves Injunction Blocking Paper From Publishing Names Of Officers Who Killed A Man 19 July 2022 About a week ago, a Florida judge decided a local law superseded the First Amendment. The judge granted an injunction to law enforcement officers, barring a Florida newspaper from...

FBI Successfully Forced A Criminal Suspect To Unlock His Wickr Account With His Face 21 July 2022 Based on (admittedly scattershot) case law, the best protection for your phone (and constitutional rights) seems to depend on whatever device owners feel is the most persistent (or dangerous)...

'Night of Terror': Lawsuit Alleges Female Inmates Were Sexually Assaulted for Hours in Indiana Jail The lawsuit claims that a correctional officer gave male inmates the key to women's housing after accepting a $1,000 bribe. 27 July 2022 A civil rights lawsuit was filed Monday on behalf of...

Michigan Supreme Court Says Photographing, Fingerprinting People Without Probable Cause Is Unconstitutional 1 August 2022 The only surprise in this decision isn’t that the court ruled the way it did. It’s that the Grand Rapids, Michigan police department apparently believed it wasn’t a...

Sabine County, Texas, deputy stud David Boyd Fifth Circuit: This Badge Wearing Serial Sexual Assaulter Is Beyond Even Our Expansive Definition Of Qualified Immunity 2 August 2022 Yikes. Deputy Boyd stayed for approximately two hours, during which time he made numerous inappropriate sexual...

New Arizona Law Will Make it Illegal to Film Within Eight Feet of Police Civil liberties groups oppose the law, saying it will impede First Amendment–protected activity and protect bad cops. 8 July 2022 Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a bill into law Wednesday that will make it...

Reverse Keyword Warrant Challenged After Cops Asked Google To Search Millions Of People’s Data Multiple Times 11 July 2022 Cops have been running to Google for years, warrants and subpoenas in hand, asking the data behemoth to give them info they can sift through to find criminal suspects...

DOJ Updates Force Policy, Creates Affirmative Duty To Intervene When Officers Violate Rights 2 June 2022 A little more than a week ago, the Department of Justice updated its policy regarding CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) prosecutions. For years, the DOJ had been complicit in the...

$3M settlemelnt, officers are free to continue terrorize the community: Video Shows Cops Execute Unarmed Father of 7 With Multiple Bullets to the Back of the Head 8 June 2022 In May of 2021, a North Carolina prosecutor released a statement claiming the deputies who surrounded Andrew...

Report Shows ICE’s Massive Surveillance Apparatus Is All Up In Americans’ Everything 20 May 2022 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has long made its own case for abolishment. Before ICE earned its current reputation as a fake-school running, report-altering, rogue agency interested in...

FBI provides Chicago police with fake online identities for "Social Media Exploration" team Internal documents also reveal that police can take over informants’ social media accounts and pose as them online. 20 May 2022 Brian Campbell couldn’t sleep. It was May 31, 2020, and demonstrations...

Yes, It’s Difficult To Change Cop Culture, But Let’s Not Pretend It’s Too Expensive Or Impossible To Achieve Quickly 1 April 2022 The US Department of Justice has entered into many consent decrees with many, many abusive law enforcement agencies. These decrees have the force of law, supported...

Law Prof Suggests Geofence Warrants Are A Net Gain For The Public, Even If They Invert The Probable Cause Standard 5 April 2022 On March 9th, we covered a Virginia court’s decision to reject a geofence/”reverse” warrant as unconstitutional. This was brought to our attention by...

The 5th Circuit Approves a Cop's Violent Response to a Dispute Over a 7-Year-Old's Littering The officer used a "pain compliance maneuver" to force information from the boy's sister, who was recording the encounter. 25 March 2022 A 2016 dispute between neighbors that began when a 7-year-old...

The 5th Circuit Approves a Cop's Violent Response to a Dispute Over a 7-Year-Old's Littering The officer used a "pain compliance maneuver" to force information from the boy's sister, who was recording the encounter. 25 March 2022 A 2016 dispute between neighbors that began when a 7-year-old...

First Amendment Group Tells Appeals Court University Officials Shouldn’t Have Access To Qualified Immunity 10 March 2022 Qualified immunity has been heavily criticized for what it allows law enforcement officers to get away with. The Supreme Court-created doctrine excuses officers from civil...

Shelby County, Tennessee, rapist sheriff's deputy Brian O. Beck Judge Allows Former Deputy Accused of Raping 14-Year-Old Girl to Avoid Prison and Sex Offender Status 4 March 2022 After striking a plea deal with prosecutors, a onetime Tennessee sheriff’s deputy who was accused of repeatedly...

Virginia Court Blocks Geofence Warrant As Unconstitutionally Vague 9 March 2022 There are multiple places government agencies can go to acquire location data. The Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision put a damper on warrantless demands, but the private sector has rushed to fill this hole in the...

Arizona House Committee Approves Bill To Criminalize Filming Cops on the Job "You'll have a bunch of people who plead to avoid trial or go broke trying to vindicate their rights." 22 February 2022 The Arizona House Appropriations Committee on Monday green-lit a bill that would criminalize...

San Francisco police used rape victims’ DNA to try to ‘incriminate’ them, D.A. says 14 February 2022 San Francisco’s district attorney said police used a database with DNA collected from victims of rape and sexual assault to connect some of them to crimes. Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin said...