Utah Bans Police From Searching Digital Data Without a Warrant (forbes.com) 55
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: In a major win for digital privacy, Utah became the first state in the nation to ban warrantless searches of electronic data. Under the Electronic Information or Data Privacy Act (HB 57), state law enforcement can only access someone's transmitted or stored digital data (including writing, images, and audio) if a court issues a search warrant based on probable cause. Simply put, the act ensures that search engines, email providers, social media, cloud storage, and any other third-party "electronic communications service" or "remote computing service" are fully protected under the Fourth Amendment (and its equivalent in the Utah Constitution).
HB 57 also contains provisions that promote government transparency and accountability. In most cases, once agencies execute a warrant, they must then notify owners within 14 days that their data has been searched. Even more critically, HB 57 will prevent the government from using illegally obtained digital data as evidence in court. In a concession to law enforcement, the act will let police obtain location-tracking information or subscriber data without a warrant if there's an "imminent risk" of death, serious physical injury, sexual abuse, livestreamed sexual exploitation, kidnapping, or human trafficking. Backed by the ACLU of Utah and the Libertas Institute, the act went through five different substitute versions before it was finally approved -- without a single vote against it -- last month. HB 57 is slated to take effect in mid-May.
HB 57 also contains provisions that promote government transparency and accountability. In most cases, once agencies execute a warrant, they must then notify owners within 14 days that their data has been searched. Even more critically, HB 57 will prevent the government from using illegally obtained digital data as evidence in court. In a concession to law enforcement, the act will let police obtain location-tracking information or subscriber data without a warrant if there's an "imminent risk" of death, serious physical injury, sexual abuse, livestreamed sexual exploitation, kidnapping, or human trafficking. Backed by the ACLU of Utah and the Libertas Institute, the act went through five different substitute versions before it was finally approved -- without a single vote against it -- last month. HB 57 is slated to take effect in mid-May.
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4th Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this not already covered by the 4th Amendment?
Re:4th Amendment? (Score:5, Insightful)
The 4th Amendment definitely applies to the federal government. The degree to which it applies to state governments is subject to various courts' arbitrary stances on the doctrine of incorporation.
Also, the argument against the Bill of Rights in the first place was that it was redundant: the federal government didn't need to be explicitly forbidden from doing specific things, when the rest of the document already laid out exactly what the federal government WAS allowed to do.
I sure am glad that a little redundancy was agreed to, aren't you?
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This is incorrect. The 4th Amendment applies to both Federal AND State governments. It supersedes any state laws, as it is explicitly defined in the governing document of *inalienable* rights inherently possessed by (not granted by govt) the people.
The 9th and 10th amendments leave everything else up to the states, but there's no room for argument as to whether the things explicitly outlined by the constitution (and its amendments) applies to all states.
That said, I don't mind states reinforcing the veracit
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but there's no room for argument as to whether the things explicitly outlined by the constitution (and its amendments) applies to all states.
14th amendment -- equal protection. The states can implement stricter protections, but cannot implement looser ones.
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Your belief is a radical minority. The accepted legal doctrine has always been that the 4th applies to the states.
The reason this was legal previously was that you gave up your right to information the 2nd you told anyone else - including the phone company which if you transmitted or stored the information on a phone, counted.
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I don't think he was saying he agreed with the states playing fast and loose with the limits of incorporation, just that some states do. Unfortunately when they do, legal or not, it'll end up costing the accused a whole lot of money and potentially their freedom.
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The accepted legal doctrine has always been that the 4th applies to the states.
This is incorrect. When the Bill of Rights was ratified, none of it applied to the states, and there are still parts of it that don't. Ratification of the 14th amendment in 1868 began the process of changing this, through incorporation of individual elements of amendments of the Bill of Rights into the 14th.
The 4th was incorporated into the 14th against the states in the early 1960s [wikipedia.org], so it's actually been just over 50 years that it has applied to the states. However, many state constitutions had similar
Re:4th Amendment? (Score:4, Insightful)
The 9th and 10th amendments, also known as 20% of the Bill of Rights, disagrees with you - they specifically say that anything not outlined in the Constitution remains the rights of the States or of the People, and that ONLY the powers outlined in the Constitution are assigned to the Federal government.
Without those extremely important amendments, it would be assumed, and thus blown away long ago by governmental overreach.
James Madison trusted nobody in government, and saved us all a lot of trouble because of it.
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The 9th and 10th amendments, also known as 20% of the Bill of Rights, disagrees with you - they specifically say that anything not outlined in the Constitution remains the rights of the States or of the People, and that ONLY the powers outlined in the Constitution are assigned to the Federal government
This is textually true, but in practice the 9th and 10th are mostly dead letters. Few rulings cite them, and the interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause and the General Welfare clause make it possible to work around them in darned near all cases, and where those don't suffice, the federal government has proven very adept at using federal funding to get its way even where it can't make law.
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Do Federal intelligence agencies ... If someone in Utah emails a terrorist in Saudi Arabia, does this law apply?
Unless you think any federal intelligence agency is a law enforcement agency in a political subdivision of the state of Utah, no.
Re:4th Amendment? (Score:5, Informative)
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It is, of course. But law enforcement and in many cases the courts have been running the shredders 24/7, so it has to be re-iterated in law.
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False, legally fourth not applicable to information you gave another party, look it up.
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Except that MY phone, on ME, is a personal effect that contains personal papers. As for records held by others, the courts bent over backwards and grabbed their ankles to decide on the third party doctrine that made the 4th not applicable to information held in confidence by another party.
You'll be boiling any minute now frogie, better hop!
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Haha, that would be your phone that provides your information to ISP and advertisers, which also means law enforcement is provided. That's the law, suck it up.
Re:4th Amendment? (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Previously the courts said they were not searching YOUR information, they were searching the information of the phone company.
The fact that you freely gave the information to the phone company meant you gave up your right to stop the search.
This law ends this stupid loophole, at least in the great state of Utah.
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The fact that Utah is doing this proves that it is wrong. The Republicunts rule there. They always put privacy above safety.
Good!! (If only that were 100% true...it's not)
By the way, I don't care which Party advocates for privacy. I'd be behind Democrats on this issue if they were privacy advocates. I'm also critical of Republicans who favor invasions of privacy.
The only "safety" those in government ultimately worry about is their own and their power.
A free and open society cannot be made "safe" by government and still remain open and free. Safety must be accomplished through societal culture, upbringing, and education.
Strat
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Every call in the USA can be found to be 5 hops from someone international who is of interest to the US gov/mil.
FISA court all the way down every network US wide. Domestic collect it all due to the "F" in FISA.
The "4th Amendment" does nothing when the US can get a rubber stamp document to show "international" connections.
Should that not work out, GCHQ, New Zealand, Canada pay back their decades US support by collecting on
Actually, privacy matters for law-abiders too (Score:1)
There are reasons privacy matters for non-criminals. The more someone knows about anyone, the more they can make life miserable for anyone whose politics or beliefs they dislike, and create the kind of power and oppression that the US Constitution was intended to limit. I wrote more about this here (though the formatting is poor): http://onemodel.org/1/e-922337... [onemodel.org]
Having said that, Scott McNealy (I think) pointed out in effect "the privacy war is over, and we lost". I think it can still be worthwhile to
Democrats (Score:2, Insightful)
It is nice to see a party that cares about such things, good thing the Democrats hold a majority...oh wait, what's that, the Republicans have a super majority in both bodies and the governorship.
Federal agencies (Score:2)
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only state law enforcement? (Score:2)
Is the Right walking it's talk? (Score:3)
I think this is an amazing example of the Right walking their talk in terms of limiting government. Sadly, they don't do enough of this while at the same time won't acknowledge what every significant right wing party in every other first world nation has acknowledged that not only is socialized medicine better morally, it is massively better fiscally (a supposed major American right wing value).
Who knows, maybe someday Republican politicians will actually become proper fiscal conservatives. It would truly put me in a middle ground if Republicans kept this up although they would still have their social conservative baggage whom I've never had any use for.
Sadly, the Republican party has become the party of inaction (6 years under Obama, over 2 with Trump) and non solutions (A giant, massively expensive wall will stop illegal immigration? Get back to me when you're ready to embrace a solution that might actually work like mandatory e-verify) so I'll keep voting blue.
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Or do you wish for open boarders and no federal welfare state?
Conservatives in the US would take either end results as good thing. Or is your living room, fridge and ATM card open to anyone to move in....Ill be there next week.
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How about when I said "Get back to me when you're ready to embrace a solution that might actually work like mandatory e-verify". Maybe read the entire post before responding so you're not wasting my time.
VPN (Score:2)
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And it will turn out to be completely useless (Score:2)