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posted by Fnord666 on Monday August 28 2017, @05:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the picture-this dept.

Some more good news on the Fourth Amendment front, even if it's somewhat jurisdictionally limited: the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has (sort of) decided [PDF] the Supreme Court's Riley decision isn't just for cellphones. (via FourthAmendment.com)

In this case, the search of a robbery suspect's backpack while he was being questioned yielded a ring, a digital camera, and other items. The police warrantlessly searched the digital phone1, discovering a photo of the suspect next to a firearm later determined to have been stolen. This led to two convictions: one for the stolen property and one for carrying a firearm without a license.

The defendant challenged all of the evidence resulting from the warrantless search of the backpack, but the state got to keep most of what it found, along with the conviction for theft. But it didn't get to keep the firearm conviction, as the court here sees digital cameras to be almost no different than cellphones when it comes to warrantless searches and the Riley decision. From the opinion:

The Commonwealth counters that Riley does not apply because digital cameras, lacking the ability to function as computers, are not analogous to cell phones for Fourth Amendment purposes. We decline to address the constitutionality of the search of the digital camera on Fourth Amendment grounds, but we apply the reasoning in Riley in holding that the search of the camera violated art. 14 [of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights].

[1] [I suspect the author meant digital camera, not digital phone - Ed]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170821/10485338053/state-supreme-court-says-digital-phones-cant-be-searched-without-warrant.shtml

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:34AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:34AM (#560636)

    Interesting approach, normalize fascism as being the way it has always been? I guess you're correct, only the WW2 aftermath and the ideological fight against communism kept the US from devolving into horror as it is doing now. The US had to defend capitalism, show it to be the superior economic method. Oddly that required a massive increase in socialist programs which fueled the post war growth. Then the 80s and 90s came along, the cold war was over and capitalism was firmly entrenched. Goodbye social programs, hello privatization and empire building, and now we're more fascist than ever with the empire on the brink of destruction.

    The US is not worthy of being the world leader, at least not with the current state of affairs. Too many xenophobes screwing up foreign policy, too many mad dogs hell bent on killing "the enemy". The great melting pot subverted by millennia old prejudices, the wealthy subverting the will of the people in their insane greed for more power. I hope we can stick to conventional warfare at least, let the survivors stand a chance of rebuilding civilization.