Peaceful Man Shot In The Face During Botched Drug Raid, No Drugs or Guns Found

Reviews Mostly Positive Following Metal-Detector Debut At Yankee Stadium

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Seriously? The folks are happy about this ?
Tell me more CBS News.
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NSA’s Bill Stinney interview | Bill Still

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Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, Why Would They Do This? | Simple Justice

Cops conducted an illegal search of a house. So far, nothing new here. Cops found nothing. Still, nothing new. Cops decide to plant meth in the house. Interesting, but nearly impossible to prove. Cops get caught on their own dashcam talking about it. Bingo!

From Courthouse News:

A police car dash cam captured Santa Clara deputies plotting to plant drugs in a woman’s home after their first illegal search turned up nothing, the woman claims in court.

Allison Ross, who was arrested after the second search of her home, sued the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, its crime lab, Sheriff Laurie Smith, and 12 of her officers, in Federal Court.

Someone always asks, can the cops be so stupid that they would forget there is video and audio running, and talk about it openly?  Well, apparently so, though the question isn’t necessarily about the degree of stupid as opposed to the degree of brazen.  Force of habit dies hard.

Can Police Search Your Cell Phone Without a Warrant? The Supreme Court is About to Decide | Liberty Blitzkrieg

Two very important cases related to the 4th Amendment protection of cellphone data went before the Supreme Court yesterday. At issue here is whether or not police can search someone’s cellphone upon arrest. As usual, the Obama administration’s Justice Department is arguing against the citizenry, and in favor of the (police) state. Let’s not forget that the “Justice” Department also argued in favor of the police being able to place GPS tracking devices on people’s cars without a warrant back in 2011. Fortunately, the Supreme Court ruled against it.

Naturally, the feds in the current case will discuss all of the criminals they were able to bring to justice as a result of these privacy violations, but they will certainly not point out America’s current epidemic of unlawful arrests, as well as arrests for petty non-violent crimes that happen each and every day. For instance, let’s not forget statistics that came out last fall from the FBI that showed police make an arrest every two seconds in the USA. I covered this in detail in my post: Land of the Free: American Police Make an Arrest Every 2 Seconds in 2012.

ACLU: Warrantless electronic surveillance surges under Obama | Digital Journal

click to jump to original article

ACLU: Warrantless electronic surveillance surges under Obama.

It’s legal: cops seize cell phone, impersonate owner | Ars Technica

Everybody loves texting (click to jump to source article)

In November 2009, police officers in the state of Washington seized an iPhone belonging to suspected drug dealer Daniel Lee. While the phone was in police custody, a man named Shawn Hinton sent a text message to the device, reading, “Hey whats up dogg can you call me i need to talk to you.” Suspecting that Hinton was looking to buy drugs from Lee, Detective Kevin Sawyer replied to the message, posing as Lee. With a series of text messages, he arranged to meet Hinton in the parking lot of a local grocery store—where Hinton was arrested and charged with attempted possession of heroin.

A Robbery of a Different Kind (the creeping police state)| Eric Peters Autos

The police state is not only here – it is being welcomed with open arms.  Exhibit A: In Aurora, Colorado, police searching for suspected bank robbers locked down an entire intersection, dragooned 40 random motorists out of their cars at gunpoint, handcuffed them and “asked” for permission to search their vehicles…. via A Robbery of a Different Kind | Eric Peters Autos.

ACLU: Most police track phones’ locations without warrants – CNN.com

…. the American Civil Liberties Union shows that phone location tracking has also become a surprisingly common tool of law-enforcement investigations — with, but often without, a warrant.The ACLU recently obtained records from over 200 police departments and other law enforcement agencies around the U.S. They found that “virtually all” of these agencies track the location of cell phones with data supplied by wireless carriers… via ACLU: Most police track phones’ locations without warrants – CNN.com.

U.S. court approves warrantless searches of cell phones | Reuters

U.S. police can search a cell phone for its number without having a warrant, according to a federal appeals court ruling….The U.S. Court of Appeal for the 7th Circuit rejected that argument on Wednesday, finding that the invasion of privacy was so slight that the police’s actions did not violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches.

9 Reasons Wired Readers Should Wear Tinfoil Hats | Wired.com

There’s plenty of reason to be concerned Big Brother is watching.  We’re paranoid not because we have grandiose notions of our self-importance, but because the facts speak for themselves.

Here’s our short list of nine reasons that Wired readers ought to wear tinfoil hats, or at least, fight for their rights and consider ways to protect themselves with encryption and defensive digital technologies.

go here: 9 Reasons Wired Readers Should Wear Tinfoil Hats | Threat Level | Wired.com.

Busted! Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV | Wired.com

The Justice Department has said that law enforcement agents employ GPS as a crime-fighting tool with “great frequency,” and GPS retailers have told Wired that they’ve sold thousands of the devices to the feds.

But little is known about how or how often law enforcement agents use them. And without a clear ruling requiring agents to obtain a “probable cause” warrant to use the devices, it leaves citizens who may have only a distant connection to a crime or no connection at all vulnerable to the whimsy of agents who are fishing for a case.via Busted! Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV | Threat Level | Wired.com.