3 ms·

Please note that this specific ruling was still that the motion to supress be denined, because the agents thought they had a legal right to search the phone and

by ok_dad 3y ago

Please note that this specific ruling was still that the motion to supress be denined, because the agents thought they had a legal right to search the phone and because they later got a warrant for the contents of the copy they made, so the defendant still got fucked even though his rights were trampled, simply because the agents were too fucking ignorant to know that what they were doing was illegal per the SCOTUS 2014 decision. td;dr: government agents can use ignorance of the law to get away with breaking it -- a quote from the decision: > Nonetheless, that still leaves the question whether to suppress the evidence from such an unlawful search. Here, the Court determines that the “good faith” exception precludes suppression, both because at the time of the search, the agents conducting the search had an objectively reasonable basis for believing that there was legal authority binding on them that authorized such a search and also because the Government ultimately obtained a search warrant to search the phone copy, disclosing all relevant details of the search to a neutral magistrate. For these reasons, further elaborated below, the Court reaffirms its prior denial of Smith’s motion to suppress.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Government agencies can use ignorance to get away with breaking the law, but for everyday civilians, ignorance is no excuse and you might in fact be judged more harshly for not knowing. Funny how that works!
lesuorac 3y ago
I mean that ChatGPT Lawyer had good faith in that ChatGPT gave him valid case citations ...
jacquesm 3y ago
It is quite astounding that this was allowed to stand in spite of it being against the law.
- tiahura 3y ago
  Shouldn't the consequence of the agent not doing their job be that the agent gets fired? Why should a criminal benefit? If his rights were violated, he can sue.
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    > Why should a criminal benefit? Because that's the way the 4th amendment works. If the state isn't good enough at their job to train their agents properly, then fuck 'em. > If his rights were violated, he can sue. They were, he did, and this case was the result. His rights were simply violated with no recourse, is what this judge said.
  - throwway120385 3y ago
    One of the consequences of an agent being bad at their job is that they accidentally put the wrong person in jail for a crime. Because some of the drafters felt that it was more important to protect the innocent, they decided to put the onus on the government to follow procedure when trying suspects.
  - biofunsf 3y ago
    It's of course absurd that the law was ambiguous enough in the first place that a warrant wasn't obviously required and it took the Supreme Court to resolve this. But the search in this case happened in 2019. How was the agent supposed to know what the Supreme Court would decide 4 years later after many appeals? The agents were acting reasonably enough, according to the law, that it took the Supreme Court to resolve it. This isn't a clear case of an agent not doing their job as it was defined. For example, we're also not going to retroactively fire all the other agents that also conducted searches like this even earlier. (We're not even going to overturn rulings of people convicted on evidence from warrantless border phone searches, since these Supreme Court rulings aren't retroactive. That's the worst thing about this in my mind). But after this ruling we can now definitively say that agents conducting warrantless border phone searches are not doing their job and should be fired. The evidence would now be thrown out in court anyway.
biofunsf 3y ago
The government's argument here is that if the agents knew they had to obtain a warrant to search the phone, they would have held the individual, or just their phone, until they got the warrant and it would have been searched anyway. If they were unable to obtain a warrant then the phone's contents would be suppressed. While it's now clear that warrantless border searches of cell phones are illegal, the very fact that this took 4 years and had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court to determine this means there was ambiguity. It's not that the agents were "ignorant of the law", it's that the law was unclear on this aspect. If agents were just ignorant of well established law this never would have made it to the Supreme Court. And these decisions generally don't apply retroactively since it would be incredibly disruptive. For example, if they were retroactive then in states that have always had laws outlawing abortions on the books, abortion doctors could be charged for crimes after Dobbs v Jackson overruled Roe v Wade. (Previously, Roe v Wade nullified those state laws). Of course, I absolutely agree with your sentiment. It's absurd this was ambiguous in the first place and that it took this long to establish that these warrantless border phone searches were illegal.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  I get the technical aspects are complex, but it’s ridiculous to me that this argument is accepted, I don’t care what explanation there is, law enforcement won’t remember or care about some case that ended in their favor, but if the judge has set a hard line and suppressed the evidence, I bet law enforcers would get some training on this topic. We need to make laws less complex where our basic rights are concerned. It’s alright, maybe, to have complex corporate tax codes, but for the basic bill of rights subjects we need simplicity for the people to really understand their rights. Thanks for the good response by the way, I like that we can discuss this like adults!

by ok_dad 3y ago

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

Government agencies can use ignorance to get away with breaking the law, but for everyday civilians, ignorance is no excuse and you might in fact be judged more harshly for not knowing. Funny how that works!

lesuorac 3y ago

I mean that ChatGPT Lawyer had good faith in that ChatGPT gave him valid case citations ...

jacquesm 3y ago

It is quite astounding that this was allowed to stand in spite of it being against the law.

tiahura 3y ago
Shouldn't the consequence of the agent not doing their job be that the agent gets fired? Why should a criminal benefit? If his rights were violated, he can sue.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  > Why should a criminal benefit? Because that's the way the 4th amendment works. If the state isn't good enough at their job to train their agents properly, then fuck 'em. > If his rights were violated, he can sue. They were, he did, and this case was the result. His rights were simply violated with no recourse, is what this judge said.
- throwway120385 3y ago
  One of the consequences of an agent being bad at their job is that they accidentally put the wrong person in jail for a crime. Because some of the drafters felt that it was more important to protect the innocent, they decided to put the onus on the government to follow procedure when trying suspects.
- biofunsf 3y ago
  It's of course absurd that the law was ambiguous enough in the first place that a warrant wasn't obviously required and it took the Supreme Court to resolve this. But the search in this case happened in 2019. How was the agent supposed to know what the Supreme Court would decide 4 years later after many appeals? The agents were acting reasonably enough, according to the law, that it took the Supreme Court to resolve it. This isn't a clear case of an agent not doing their job as it was defined. For example, we're also not going to retroactively fire all the other agents that also conducted searches like this even earlier. (We're not even going to overturn rulings of people convicted on evidence from warrantless border phone searches, since these Supreme Court rulings aren't retroactive. That's the worst thing about this in my mind). But after this ruling we can now definitively say that agents conducting warrantless border phone searches are not doing their job and should be fired. The evidence would now be thrown out in court anyway.

biofunsf 3y ago

The government's argument here is that if the agents knew they had to obtain a warrant to search the phone, they would have held the individual, or just their phone, until they got the warrant and it would have been searched anyway. If they were unable to obtain a warrant then the phone's contents would be suppressed. While it's now clear that warrantless border searches of cell phones are illegal, the very fact that this took 4 years and had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court to determine this means there was ambiguity. It's not that the agents were "ignorant of the law", it's that the law was unclear on this aspect. If agents were just ignorant of well established law this never would have made it to the Supreme Court. And these decisions generally don't apply retroactively since it would be incredibly disruptive. For example, if they were retroactive then in states that have always had laws outlawing abortions on the books, abortion doctors could be charged for crimes after Dobbs v Jackson overruled Roe v Wade. (Previously, Roe v Wade nullified those state laws). Of course, I absolutely agree with your sentiment. It's absurd this was ambiguous in the first place and that it took this long to establish that these warrantless border phone searches were illegal.

ok_dad 3y ago
I get the technical aspects are complex, but it’s ridiculous to me that this argument is accepted, I don’t care what explanation there is, law enforcement won’t remember or care about some case that ended in their favor, but if the judge has set a hard line and suppressed the evidence, I bet law enforcers would get some training on this topic. We need to make laws less complex where our basic rights are concerned. It’s alright, maybe, to have complex corporate tax codes, but for the basic bill of rights subjects we need simplicity for the people to really understand their rights. Thanks for the good response by the way, I like that we can discuss this like adults!