<i>....as of 2010 the Tallahassee Police Department had used stingrays a staggering 200 times without ever disclosing their use to a judge to get a warrant.</i><p>This is the heart of the problem with law enforcement surveillance at all levels (local, state, federal). In the U.S. we've always had independent judicial oversight for police entering and searching your home. There's absolutely no reason why a similar invasion (if not more severe), which can track your movements and conversations, should be held to a lesser standard.<p>Time and again law enforcement has sided with what's expedient. They should be erring on the side of caution when it comes to the fundamental rights of the citizens they've sworn to protect.
Pretty sure an NDA can't prevent an individual from testifying truthfully in a court in the US no matter what the NDA says. So essentially the Police just lied.
'Police "did not want to obtain a search warrant because they did not want to reveal information about the technology they used to track the cell phone signal,"'<p>"As two judges noted during the oral argument, as of 2010 the Tallahassee Police Department had used stingrays a staggering 200 times without ever disclosing their use to a judge to get a warrant."<p>I'm curious if the government plans to appeal, because if it goes to a higher court, I wouldn't be surprised if it was overturned. I have noticed a pattern where some middle level courts will actually, gasp, rule in favor of the Constitution, only to be overturned in a higher court (years later of course).<p>This is such a blatant violation of the fourth amendment that it is disgusting (much like many other Constitutional violations happening these days).<p>Also, please remember that according to Ruse Tice and an unnamed source of Sibel Edmonds, the SCOTUS itself is likely to be compromised via traditional intelligence tools (blackmail, corruption, etc).<p>This is a symptom of larger issues at hand in society.
The police department has Constitutional obligation to follow the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Don't these obligations trump the provisions of any private contract?
So here's the problem that I have with most of these types of cases, where police don't follow proper procedure to capture a suspect. Let's say they went through normal procedures -- get a sketch artist to make a possibly inaccurate caricature of the suspect, and use that to make an arrest, and have the victim ID the suspect. This has a good chance of convicting the wrong person. First, if the sketch is inaccurate, the victim may have that image in there mind afterwards, which would influence picking out the suspect from a lineup.<p>Now, using the alternative procedure, in which the police are tracking down the victim's stolen phone (I'm assuming with the victim's blessing), there is a much higher chance of getting the right suspect.<p>So, how do you argue with someone that the police should use inferior (but legal) evidence to put the (possibly wrong) person away, instead of using more accurate (but 4'th amendment violating) evidence to get the right person? Now in cases where proper procedure always gives superior evidence, then it is easier to argue for that (such as standards for collecting DNA evidence to avoid contamination). But in other cases, it is possible that unauthorized methods can lead police away from an innocent person and toward the guilty one.
Metacomplaint:<p>The real title of this piece should be "Police used NDA as an excuse to hide use of cell phone tracking device from judge." As others have already commented, (e.g. pmorici) there is no way a civil agreement could prevent disclosure in a criminal matter.<p>It's no great surprise the police would want to do this.<p>What's disappointing is the reflexive journalistic cringe to be "fair" which in fact ends up being unfair. I'm not advocating froth-at-the-mouth partisanship a la Fox News or WorldNetDaily. But this headline unambiguously skews the story by taking the cops' word as they (mendaciously) uttered it.
So in a case like this assuming the defendant is able to suppress any information used against him with respect to his location. Does it even matter for his case? The police now know who he is and assuming DNA evidence, rape test kit evidence, etc. come back and implicate him won't he still be found guilty? Or is all of that suppressed because the police wouldn't have found him otherwise without violating the 4th amendment?<p>Edit: Made my first question more specific
It sounds like they did some dirty underhanded things... But did they get in trouble for finding the thief of a phone, by tracking the victim's phone?