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Comment by hwillis | Hacker News Reader

A suspect runs into a garage with several unlocked cars, including yours. The suspect had drugs when he went into the garage and didn't when he came out. The drugs may be in any of the cars or none of them.

You would not get a search warrant in that case unless your car was the only one in the garage. The police don't know if there is three or even one phone connected to the tower in that time, and they should not get a warrant.

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A better analogy here, as some seem to struggle, would be the dealer goes into an apartment building and comes out empty handed, it could be in any of the apartments or none.

Wait, really?

If police say they have extremely good evidence to believe the drugs are in the garage, in the scenario you described, a court wouldn't issue a search warrant for the garage including any cars it contains?

I'm genuinely surprised. Is there a name for whatever legal principle prevents the court from doing so? I'd like to learn more about this.

Because from Wikipedia [1], I'd have assumed that this would be a cut-and-dried instance of probable cause [2]. Is it about the vehicle owners being different from the garage owner?

Edit: some quick googling seems to indicate that search warrants in the US can be issued to include all or specifically identified vehicles on a property, but no indication of what conditions need to be met.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant#United_States

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause

It really depends on what is, at the time, considered "reasonable" search by the people with the monopoly on the violence.

generally, most laws are overlooked when the situation involves drugs. Cops can search you, your car, whatever on suspicion that drugs may be present.

> You would not get a search warrant [for several unlocked cars]

Hold up, you state that rather firmly but what's the reasoning that supports it?

What's the rationale that separates 1 car from "several" for probable cause?

____

I feel there's a risk of conflating:

1. Good reason to believe X is somehow involved a crime.

2. Probable cause to search for/inside something owned by X.

While there is a strong correlation between the answers to those two questions, they are definitely not the same.

The guy is making no sense. Or picked a bad fact pattern to make a point.

In the case he's describing you'd just get a search warrant for the garage and everything in it. Or, if you could establish probable cause (which seems likely here) you'd just go look for the drugs.

I wanted something slightly more realistic. It works just as well if the garage is an apartment building where everyone keeps their apartment unlocked.

Maybe that's the answer: Allow them to see how many. They can ask for a warrant for *the* device in the geofence, excluding a list of known devices. The phone company either returns the identity of exactly one device or returns no data.

How far can probable cause stretch?

Can I say, "well it's probably in one of those 3 cars" so then I can get a warrant?

After the Boston Marathon bombing, they searched a 20-block area for the suspect (and found him). Was that legal?

Wasn't it a voluntary search?

There's actually a Slate article covering this topic[0]. First, consent was given for certain homes. However, the article also notes that under "exigent circumstances" warrantless searches are permitted:

> In exigent circumstances, or emergency situations, police can conduct warrantless searches to protect public safety. This exception to the Fourth Amendment’s probable cause requirement normally addresses situations of “hot pursuit,” in which an escaping suspect is tracked to a private home. But it might also apply to the events unfolding in Boston if further harm or injury might be supposed to occur in the time it takes to secure a warrant. A bomber believed to be armed and planning more violence would almost certainly meet such prerequisites.

[0]: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/04/boston-bomber-ma...

A resident found him in his boat in his back yard and called police.

> After the Boston Marathon bombing, they searched a 20-block area for the suspect (and found him). Was that legal?

Uh, why wouldn't a cop be allowed to walk/drive/fly-over public roadways in a 20-block area and look from public land in any direction?

Also do note, they knew specifically who they were looking for and had location data from their cellphones [1]. Not a judge, but if I was and somebody wanted a search warrant to find a person at a location and their evidence was the dude's cellphone is there, I'd grant it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_Tsarnaev#Manhunt_and_...

Clarification: is this garage a public one, containing different owners' cars? Or is it a private three-car garage? (I think you're talking about the former, while many of your responders are assuming the latter.)

> The police don't know if there is three or even one phone connected to the tower in that time.

Huh? The entire point the parent was making is that they do "know" which cell phones were connected during specific times.

> Huh? The entire point the parent was making is that they do "know" which cell phones were connected during specific times.

As I understand it, the point is that law enforcement does not know this, and thus they send a request to the service provider for all devices within this geofence within this timebox.

The service provider must then search the entirety of the relevant datastores for devices matching the geo- and time requirements.

In the specific cases in question, the officers had video evidence of one of the perpetrators using a cell phone, and used that to justify the warrant. The court ruled that even this was insufficient, but is part of the reason why they are not applying the exclusionary rule to these cases even though the evidence itself is inadmissible.

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