Utah Bans Police from Searching Digital Data Without a Warrant, Closes Loophole
forbes.com
forbes.com
He said cell phone location information "does not fit neatly under existing precedents," but I think the court should just re-evaluate the 1970s cases and come to a place of consistent reasoning about our data, so everything can fit neatly under the protection of the 4th amendment. When we use products or buy things, we expect our data to be private. I don't expect my banker to give away my personal financial information. Nor do I expect my cell phone carrier to share my call history. We do have an expectation of privacy, and the 1970s rulings are hugely flawed, especially in light of today's digital world.
As an individual the only option is to withdraw from society as a whole and become a mountain man, that seems unreasonable.
A fairly reasonable exception which is then randomly extended to also cover prostitution and porn. Oh well.
I do have to question why they needed a specific emergency exemption for "livestreamed sexual exploitation" when that "exploitation" would not qualify as "sexual abuse". (If it were abuse, then it would already be covered under the exemption for sexual abuse!)
Abuse and exploitation do, in fact, have different legal definitions in Utah.
Livestreaming a sexual act without the consent of the 2nd party wouldn't be covered under sexual abuse, as the party is consenting to the sexual act. But, would be covered as exploitation, if the party doesn't consent to the distribution of their image [2].
I'm a huge critic of the church's influence on our legislature, but it's not an extension to porn and/or prostitution. If anything, it's a strengthening of privacy.
[Edit] spelling, sources, and clarification [1] https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title76/Chapter5/76-5-S406.html [2] https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title76/Chapter5B/C76-5b-P2_180001...
In Utah the Church has a large (usually indirect) influence over politics. They don't often pick sides, but with some social issues like Gay marriage and legalized Cannabis they have specifically reached out to members encouraging them to vote a certain way.
This can be disputed.
The legislator wasn't even coerced - he would just regularly report back to church leaders and ask for guidance on which way he should lean on specific issues.
If the church has that kind of direct influence out of state, it stands to reason they at least have a similar level in Utah where most of the legislature and politicians are Mormon.
Salt Lake City for example was the first major US city I encountered the audible cross-walk indicators for the visually impaired. And not just here and there, but all over the city. Salt Lake City has had popular gay and lesbian mayors and a vibrant and resilient collection of various sub-cultures that may not be desirable to the LDS Church but persist nonetheless.
Mostly I was just trying to point out that while the media and popular culture reduces parts of the world to simple caricatures, usually the particulars are more complex and nuanced.
Where does it say this?
It doesn't take much effort to make the porn and prostitution peg fit into that hole.
Thus, we can say that the "human trafficking" exemption is really a prostitution exemption, and not what it sounds like.
I don't think slavery, sex slavery, or sexual assault are good reasons for removing safe harbor from sites that host user generated content. Instead, such sites have been, and could continue to be valuable resources for law enforcement.
> Sexual assault and rape are bad enough on their own, of course. So why the need to force these cases into a framework that doesn't fit?
> Because the sex trafficking framework allows for a lot more prosecutorial possibilities.
> Plus, sex trafficking is such a buzzword that cases employing it are guaranteed to get more attention.
“Smelling marijuana” is easy to push with plausible deniability.
Claiming there is imminent risk of sexual abuse is really difficult to justify on the fly. It may happen, but that’s going to be a tough edge case for cops to abuse.
In my jurisdiction, the coroner gets called for every 10th expected death in a nursing home just to ensure some accountability.
Or is it a free for all with sealed records unless they get presented as evidence?
To identify and locate underage camwhores (who are presumed to be put up to the task).
Being forced to simply flirt with men all day constitutes exploitation, not abuse.
The nature of livestreams mean there is little to go on unless they're broadcasting, hence the exception.
My guess is to prevent internet-based sex-tourism: watching stuff that's illegal where you are, streamed from somewhere else, like another country or continent.
If we have cameras in that situation, the PO will have no choice but to issue a summons to the person and then potentially have to show up in court if the person requests it.
Is that the best use of our police officers and the courts time? I think your intention is to provide citizens protection against police abuse of our rights but I think that the situation is more complex and getting the right mix of tech and humanity in police practices requires better training and education of both the police and the citizenry.
...unless they're black?
There's no reason to give cops this discretion, it just leads to unfair policing practices. Better to have police enforce all laws and think hard about what we want those laws to be.
This is what I was alluding to. Historically judges have had a lot of leeway when it comes to sentencing, and, having heard all the details of the case, they are in the best position to decide the defendant's fate. (For what it's worth, I disagree with mandatory minimum sentencing laws.)
Doesn't overlooking the beer also mean we've decided it's ok for teens to drink? What is the difference you see?
So it really comes down to philosophically purity vs. pragmatism. I'm naturally drawn toward the former, but as I've gotten older I see more value in the latter, even tho intellectual it bothers me.
Presumably the footage is archived and only reviewed for disputes, court, etc.
https://genius.com/Dave-chappelle-killin-them-softly-annotat...
I agree with your point tho, bureaucracy has trouble thinking about edge cases, it's hard to create a complete spec of things like not requiring bringing someone in for an open beer if they aren't clearly drunk
It is very much the job of the courts to interpret the law with respect to those edge cases and their judgements can provide guidance to politicians about how to more narrowly define the law. This is how things are supposed to work _in theory_.
They only review the videos if there's an incident or complaint. So it's not like there's someone watching 40 x 8 hour videos every day.
/this is a smaller rural area in the midwest US, so ymmv but these officers do use discretion and the higher ups don't care if it's nothing big. In the Chief's words, "we were all young and stupid at some point."
Right now there isn't, but some day, a computer might be able to do it.
Instead, there should be extremely strong disincentives (such as being fired, barred from working in law enforcement, jail time, etc) for an officer to turn off their body cam when interacting with the public.
Citizens should also be able to know whether the camera is on (blinking red light etc) and be able to report instances where it was not.
And realistically the footage that's of interest isn't going to be those personal moments (or overhearing a call with the officer's family, say) it's the ones where the officer is engaging with a member of the public. And maybe limit viewing access to in-person, by court order, or to credentialed journalists or something.
"footage that's of interest isn't going to be those personal moments" is basically the "nothing to hide" argument against privacy, which I reject.
Sure there is, there are enormous privacy concerns with how police body cameras can be used, and barely any of the departments which have adopted them have reasonable policies for governing that. What about interviewing vulnerable victims? How do you handle FOI requests? What about the departments that want to incorporate facial recognition into their body camera program? Would you like the police to have a database of your movements, or the political events you attend? None of this even addresses the fact that these programs have also largely failed to provide the transparency and accountability they promised. I’m not arguing for one side or the other, but to claim there are no reasons against them is dismissive and ignorant.
I think cops should always have a light on when they are recording; that provides check for people to know when they are or are not being recorded.
When recording is activated, a pure 1-second tone should sound, with an audible voice indicator "bodycam number ### recording" with a timestamp and location. When recording is deactivated, a 1-second series of short chirps , with an audible voice indicator "bodycam number ### deactivating in 30 seconds, 15 seconds, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, off".
That way, if a cop is turning off the camera at an inappropriate time, someone else can start recording before it cuts off, or the cop can cancel the deactivation without interrupting the recording, and if a suspect hears or sees all cops turning off their cameras at once, they might have a possible defense for resisting arrest. Furthermore, the recording of one cop's camera would be able to show if another cop's camera was on or off.
Ultrasonic tones outside the range of human hearing could encode "bodycam ### is recording" or "bodycam ### is not recording" or "bodycam ### case has been opened", so that any available audio recording without a high-frequency filter could decode it enough for a lawyer to request preservation of evidence from that specific camera and then later get the full video.
Still a lot less questions than officer testimony.
If you're ever on a jury, reject police testimony as a basis for determining guilt!
In my opinion (and hopefully, this is what the law means) the warrant should be needed whenever the police need to compel a third party to hand over information. So, viewing a public FB profile is okay, but demanding FB to show the private profile would require a warrant.
(v) if the owner has voluntarily and publicly disclosed the location information[.]; or
(vi) from the remote computing service provider if the remote computing service provider voluntarily discloses the location information...