Federal Appeals Court Rules Marking Tires for Parking Enforcement Illegal

April 25, 2019 — bunkerville

 

This has to be considered an interesting take on the fourth amendment. The days whereby the police could mark one’s tires to determine over staying in a parking spot appears to be over.

Of course a purpose of parking enforcement is to raise revenue. It is also to keep reasonable access to merchants and control traffic flow. Must we always be tweaking our amendments?

How is marking tires a search? The result of course will be the installation of meters, charging for parking, collecting the meter fees. All and all making life less pleasant.

Apparently our Firestones have more rights than we do…as my data is being sucked up as I type this. Of course the police can always get a FISA warrant now can’t they?

 

 

 

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Marking tires to enforce parking rules is like entering property without a search warrant, a federal court said Monday as it declared the practice unconstitutional in Michigan and three other states.

Alison Taylor had received more than a dozen $15 tickets for exceeding the two-hour parking limit in Saginaw. The city marks tires with chalk to keep track of how long a vehicle is parked. Her lawyer argued that a parking patrol officer violated the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed.

The purpose of marking tires was to “raise revenue,” not to protect the public against a safety risk, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

“The city does not demonstrate, in law or logic, that the need to deter drivers from exceeding the time permitted for parking — before they have even done so — is sufficient to justify a warrantless search under the community caretaker rationale,” the court said.

[Taylor’s attorney, Philip Ellison ] argued that marking tires was similar to police secretly putting a GPS device on a vehicle without a proper warrant, which was the subject of a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Here is the opinion in the case

Read more

Posted in Government. Tags: , , . 10 Comments »

DEA seeks presciption records without warrants

January 28, 2013 — bunkerville

On the face of it, this does not appear to be a big story. What is important is the continuing effort to limit State’s Rights as well as our own. Forget privacy and Patient Doctor privilege. I see a more ominous future in the DEA’s march. Beware of the push for Mental Health evaluation before purchasing guns as has been suggested. Has any one ever been given a prescription for Valium when under a lot of stress? In fact, one in nine has seeked counseling some time in their life. Keep your eye out on this trojan horse and gun control.

The American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to block the Drug Enforcement Administration from obtaining prescription records without a warrant in Oregon.

The state of Oregon filed suit against the DEA last year after the agency sought to access the Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), a database of prescription records for certain drugs. The ACLU and its Oregon affiliate hope to join the lawsuit on behalf of patients and doctors.

“Oregon law and the U.S. Constitution clearly require the DEA to get a warrant just like any other law enforcement agency,” David Fidanque of the ACLU of Oregon said. “The ACLU opposed the creation of the Oregon prescription database precisely because we were concerned about protecting the privacy of patients and doctors who have done nothing wrong. The Legislature agreed to add the search warrant requirement to partially address that concern.

In seeking to join the lawsuit on Saturday, the ACLU said the DEA’s actions violated the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The group argued that patients and physicians in Oregon have a “reasonable expectations of privacy in their prescription records,” and were protected from unreasonable searches. H/T: Raw Story (http://s.tt/1z0nS)
Posted in Gun Control, Healthcare. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . 12 Comments »

NSA spying on citizens – Court says illegal

September 2, 2012 — bunkerville

The spin continues. A secret court rules that the NSA is violating our rights, with a secret ruling. The EFF is continuing this fight. The good news is that the bill that somehow permits this sunsets at the end of the year, if congress does not renew. So let’s keep our eye on this one.  Don’t miss the video- and pass it on.

The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data. Chilling video and story link here: “The Program”

 
 The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is suing the Justice Department for details of last month’s ruling by a secretive U.S. court that National Security Agency’s domestic spying program violated the U.S. Constitution, Jon Brodkin of arstechnica reports.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) found that “on at least one occasion” the NSA had violated the Fourth Amendment’s restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The EFF wants the information because of its current lawsuit against the NSA (i.e. Jewel vs. NSA) that alleges the U.S. government operates an illegal mass domestic surveillance program. Three NSA whistleblowers—including William Binney—agreed to provide evidence that the NSA has been running a domestic spying program since 2001.

Read more: Business Insider

Posted in War on Terror. Tags: , , , , . 8 Comments »