Reddit Wins Against FOSTA Lawsuit: 9th Circuit Says FOSTA Requires Knowledge Of Violation

Legal Issues

from the fosta-doesn't-do-what-you-want-it-to-do dept

There’s this weird thing that people who hate Section 230 continue to ignore: that if you just take away Section 230, it doesn’t magically make companies liable for the actions of their users. If you studied the history of Section 230 (i.e., read Jeff Kosseff’s excellent book on the topic) or just had a passing familiarity with the nature of concepts such as scienter and mens rea, you might understand these things. But most people, falsely, assume that without Section 230, websites automatically become liable for the things their users do, even if the websites are totally unaware of the details.

That’s wrong. And now the 9th Circuit has made it’s clear that’s wrong. As you’ll recall, back in 2018, Congress changed Section 230 for the first (and so far only) time to say it did not apply in cases involving sex trafficking as defined in 18 USC 1591. This was the now infamous FOSTA, which has been clearly shown to have not helped law enforcement stop sex trafficking (in fact, it’s made it more difficult for law enforcement), and has actually put more lives at risk as well, by making professions like sex work much more dangerous.

At the same time, it has opened up a new avenue for lawyers to file often questionable civil suits against various tech companies, often alleging that any extremely tangential relationship to sex trafficking can now be blamed on the websites. In April of 2021, some lawyers sued Reddit on behalf of unnamed “Jane Does” arguing that users on the site had (horrifically) shared child sexual abuse material (CSAM) including images of their client(s). The complaint made a bunch of wild conjectures, arguing that because Reddit doesn’t do age verification, and hasn’t magically stopped all users from uploading CSAM, that Reddit was knowingly platforming CSAM for profit. A year ago, the district court dismissed the lawsuit for a variety of reasons, basically noting that it was clear Reddit had no actual knowledge and therefore remained protected under Section 230.

That ruling was appealed to the 9th Circuit, leading to this new ruling that confirms that, without knowledge, you can’t hold Reddit liable. The court starts out by highlighting that the underlying question is who can actually be held liable for violating federal sex trafficking laws (1591), the website or the user. It notes that various district courts have decided in different ways on this question, but this is the first time the 9th Circuit has taken it up.

It notes that the language of the various laws at play are pretty clear, that to be liable, the sites own conduct must violate the law. First, the federal sex trafficking laws require as much:

In a sex trafficking beneficiary suit against a defendant-website, the most important component is the defendant-website’s own conduct—its “participation in the venture.” See 18 U.S.C. § 1595(a) (authorizing lawsuits against those who “benefit[] . . . from participation in a [trafficking] venture”). A complaint against a website that merely alleges trafficking by the website’s users—without the participation of the website—would not survive. Proof that a user committed criminal trafficking may “entitle a plaintiff to relief” in a case against the user, but not against the website.

Honestly, it seems like the ruling could have just ended here. The court is saying that even absent FOSTA/230, that there’s no underlying sex trafficking claim that can be brought against Reddit, given that Reddit was not participating in the venture, as required under long-exiting sex trafficking laws.

Still, the court goes on to note that FOSTA also hammers this home, that the site has to have knowledge of the activity and to have been responsible for the conduct itself.

Alongside section 230(e)(5)(A), FOSTA added two other trafficking-related immunity exceptions to the CDA: sections 230(e)(5)(B) and (C). Those provisions permit states to prosecute websites if “the conduct underlying the charge” would violate 18 U.S.C. § 1591 or 18 U.S.C. § 2421A, which criminalize the facilitation of child sex trafficking and prostitution, respectively. 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(5)(B)– (C). Because “identical words and phrases within the same statute should normally be given the same meaning,” we assume that “the conduct underlying” has the same meaning across the three provisions. Powerex Corp. v. Reliant Energy Servs., Inc., 551 U.S. 224, 232 (2007). This is “doubly appropriate” here, id., because the provisions are adjacent and were enacted simultaneously, see Lomax v. Ortiz-Marquez, 140 S. Ct. 1721, 1725 (2020).

Because subsections (B) and (C) authorize criminal prosecutions, there is good reason to think that “the conduct underlying the charge” as used in (B) and (C) refers only to the defendant’s own conduct. Reading criminal statutes, we “presume[] that Congress did not intend to ‘dispense with a conventional mens rea element, which would require that the defendant know the facts that make his conduct illegal.’” United States v. Collazo, 984 F.3d 1308, 1324 (9th Cir. 2021) (quoting Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 605 (1994)). Applying this principle here, we presume subsection (B) permits states to prosecute websites for trafficking only if the defendant “knowingly” facilitated trafficking, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1591. See § 1591(e)(4). And we presume subsection (C) permits states to prosecute websites for promoting or facilitating prostitution only if the website “inten[ded]” to do so, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2421A(a). In short, we presume these provisions authorize criminal prosecutions only for a defendant’s own crimes. Because section 230(e)(5)(A) uses the same language, we read it to include the same limitation. See Powerex, 551 U.S. at 232. The statutory context reinforces our conclusion that section 230(e)(5)(A) removes section 230 immunity only when a website violates 18 U.S.C. §1591.

The panel of judges (minus one) also note that the legislative history supports this finding, noting that after concerns were raised by some of us how the original FOSTA language would be used to file frivolous lawsuits, that the Senate amended the language to suggest that knowledge of the underlying legal violation was necessary.

Opponents of the bill, however, were concerned that it would “bring a deluge of frivolous litigation targeting legitimate, law-abiding intermediaries” because it was “unbounded by any actual knowledge” requirement. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017: Hearing on S. 1693 Before the S. Comm. on Com., Sci. & Transp., 115th Cong. 35 (2017) (statement of Abigail Slater, General Counsel, Internet Association). These opponents suggested amendments to require “a clear sense of knowing,” as to “not damage those who are truly trying to grow and innovate based on that protection they get from lawsuits.” Id. at 53 (statement of Xavier Becerra, Attorney General of Cal.).

In response, the Senate altered the bill to its current form to “eliminate section 230 as a defense for websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking.” S. Rep. No. 115-199, at 2 (2018) (emphasis added). As reintroduced, the bill’s “knowing standard” was intended to create a “high bar” for liability.

Given all of that, the court then looks at whether or not Reddit’s own conduct here violated the law, and determined that it clearly did not.

In this case, the plaintiffs have not alleged that Reddit knowingly participated in or benefitted from a sex trafficking venture. They allege that Reddit provides a platform where it is easy to share child pornography, highlights subreddits that feature child pornography to sell advertising on those pages, allows users who share child pornography to serve as subreddit moderators, and fails to remove child pornography even when users report it, as the plaintiffs did in this case. Together, they say, this amounts to knowing participation in a sex trafficking venture.

Taken as true, these allegations suggest only that Reddit “turned a blind eye” to the unlawful content posted on its platform, not that it actively participated in sex trafficking. See Afyare, 632 F. App’x at 286. Moreover, the plaintiffs have not alleged a connection between the child pornography posted on Reddit and the revenue Reddit generates, other than the fact that Reddit makes money from advertising on all popular subreddits. See Noble, 335 F. Supp. 3d at 524 (finding insufficient connection between general benefits defendant received from working for individual who perpetrated sex trafficking and the perpetrator’s conduct toward the victim). Plaintiffs who have successfully alleged beneficiary liability for sex trafficking have charged defendants with far more active forms of participation than the plaintiffs allege here. See, e.g., Canosa v. Ziff, No. 18 CIV. 4115 (PAE), 2019 WL 498865, at *23–24 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 28, 2019) (denying motion to dismiss beneficiary liability claims where plaintiffs alleged affiliates of Harvey Weinstein lured victims “through the promise of production deals,” provided Weinstein “medications he required to perform sexual acts,” and “cleaned up after his sexual assaults”). As such, the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim that Reddit violated 18 U.S.C. § 1591.

Again, given that they found that Reddit did not violate the sex trafficking law, the whole FOSTA/230 discussion is… almost extraneous. Indeed, while the ruling is good and important, I almost fear that by going more into FOSTA/230 that it leads people to argue that the problem here is not that the plaintiffs failed to make a legitimate sex trafficking claim against Reddit, but that FOSTA “didn’t go far enough.” But, that’s wrong. Because the underlying claim has to have merit, and here it did not.

As noted above, there is one judge on the panel who chose not to sign onto the part about the legislative history. Judge Ryan Nelson concurs with the rest of the majority opinion, but basically doesn’t want to bring the legislative history into the conversation (Nelson, a Trump appointee and a Federalist Society member is basically just toeing the standard Scalia-inspired approach that legislative history is meaningless and should never be used in court). Judge Nelson notes that the ruling doesn’t even need it, since the “statutory language is unambiguous.”

On the whole, this is a good ruling that again highlights that you don’t get to just make websites liable, even if you take away Section 230. The website has to actually do something that violates the law. All Section 230 really does is make sure that you put the liability on the right party. And that’s what has happened here. Again.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, conduct, csam, fosta, knowledge, liability, section 230, sex trafficking
Companies: reddit

Court: No Immunity For Cops Who Waited Months To Test Heart Shaped Candy They Claimed Were Drugs

Legal Issues

from the nothing-says-I-love-you-like-a-fistful-of-drugs dept

We know cops often can’t differentiate innocuous substances from actual drugs. These from-the-hip determinations are just the manufacturing of reasonable suspicion and probable cause, something that allows cops to perform the searches and seizures they were planning to do anyway.

Whether it’s the “odor of marijuana” (something that can rarely be objectively examined in court) or shitty, cheap drug tests that think bird poop/cotton candy/drywall dust are illegal substances, cops almost always find a way to start searching and seizing. Then there are drug dogs, which are just as prone to respond to their handler’s prompts as to the actual odor of drugs.

This is all supposed to be backstopped by actual lab tests, which will determine whether or not the “training and experience” hunch was on the money. But even the drug labs are often broken. When freedom is on the line, it often appears law enforcement officers consider extended stays in local jails to just be the unfortunate side effect of the existence of the criminal element. If you were truly innocent, you wouldn’t have been pulled over… or whatever.

Every so often, a court rights the wrongs the never-ending War on Drugs has created. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals [PDF] doesn’t see anything warranting reversal (at least not at this point) in a case where cops pretended something was drugs and prosecutors pretended to not know any better for months after finding out what the cops seized wasn’t drugs.

Fernando Saint-Jean, a Haitian-born US citizen, was pulled over by a Palisades, NJ police officer while returning from a family birthday party. The officer claimed the window tint was too dark and Saint-Jean was driving too slowly. Rather than address the alleged moving violations, Officer Michael Holland, along with the later-arriving Officer Fabricio Salazar, ordered Saint-Jean and his uncle out of the car. After a third officer arrived, Officer Holland talked Saint-Jean into consenting to a search of his vehicle.

The officers dug around for a bit before retrieving this supposed contraband.

In searching a storage compartment between the two front seats, the officers found three small, sealable plastic bags containing several heart-shaped objects. Those objects had the appearance of Valentine’s Day candies, but Valentine’s Day was two-and-a-half months earlier, and the officers suspected that the items were actually controlled substances – MDMA or ecstasy.

Apparently it’s suspicious to not immediately consume any and all holiday-related candy one might obtain. Who knows what time period is considered acceptable for candy consumption, but this fell outside the parameters set by these officers’ extensive training on holiday candy possession timeframes. Saint-Jean explained a co-worker had given him the candy and even offered to put the officers in touch with her. They refused to consider the most reasonable explanation for the candy’s existence. They handcuffed Saint-Jean and took him to the police station.

This all could have been cleared up fairly quickly but the officers weren’t interested in clearing things up.

The intake process at the police station included photographing and fingerprinting Saint-Jean; it did not involve administering any tests on the small, heart-shaped objects. Despite not testing the suspected drugs or calling Saint-Jean’s coworker, two officers, Holland and Richard Dey, initiated legal proceedings against Saint-Jean. Those included a traffic summons and a criminal summons for possessing a controlled substance…

The drug charge didn’t stick. Before his initial appearance, prosecutors downgraded the charge to “disorderly person” (which still makes no sense given his cooperation with the candy-seeking officers). Two months after his initial appearance, the candy was tested by a New Jersey forensic lab. The final determination? It was candy.

Even though prosecutors received the report clearing Saint-Jean of alleged drug possession, they didn’t drop the final charge against him until four months later.

The lower court granted absolute immunity to the prosecutors. However, it refused to extend immunity to the officers, both under New Jersey law as well as under federal law. The lower court also gave Saint-Jean a chance to amend his complaint to address deficiencies in his original lawsuit. Saint-Jean did so. While this was still under examination by the lower court, the officers appealed to the Third Circuit, seeking to overturn the lower court’s refusal to extend immunity.

You’re jumping the gun, says the Third Circuit — something that appears to be the officers’ standard m.o. There’s nothing to be appealed yet because the new complaint still needs a response from the officers, even if they plan to use pretty much the same arguments in hopes of getting the case dismissed.

[E]ven if this Court were to rule on qualified immunity now, the District Court would still need to compare the original complaint with the amended complaint and analyze whether the appellate ruling would apply after Saint-Jean’s amendments. Due to the need for that subsequent comparison of the pleadings, immediate appellate review of the order would not conclusively determine the officers’ entitlement to qualified immunity.

The officers will have to wait until the lower court rules before they can once again claim any reasonable officer that ignored the pretext of a stop to coerce a person into submitting to a search of their car — a search that only produced bags of candy the officers couldn’t even be bothered to submit to a cheap field test — could not possibly know that this extended string of officious, freedom-threatening bullshit might violate Saint-Jean’s Constitutional rights.

Good luck with that. The traffic stop occurred three years after the Supreme Court ruled that extending a traffic stop without reasonable suspicion violates the Fourth Amendment. And there doesn’t seem to be anything on the record that suggests the officer that pulled over Saint-Jean had any reasonable suspicion he was carrying contraband in his car. He was compliant, provided a reasonable explanation for his travels, and — on top of everything else — submitted to a search. All of that is going to come into play when this is revisited and it’s hard to believe the extension of this stop was justified by anything Saint-Jean did. But never count a court out when it comes to QI. Sometimes they’re able to snatch cop victories from apparent defeat.

Filed Under: 3rd circuit, candy, drugs, evidence, fabricio salazar, fernando saint-jean, michael holland, new jersey, palisades, police, qualified immunity

French Government Hits Clearview With The Maximum Fine For GDPR Violations

Legal Issues

from the yeah...-that's-a-shame dept

Clearview hasn’t won many friends since its inception. Scraping the web of any relevant content to compile a few billion records for facial recognition matches is no way to run a respectable business, and Clearview has been anything but respectable.

Early access was granted to anyone who was interested, including private companies, government agencies, and whatever billionaires might be willing to throw a few dollars Clearview’s way. Since all of this data is compiled without anyone’s permission (including the sites being scraped), Clearview has been fined, sued, hit with cease-and-desists, and found itself reviled even in the surveillance tech industry.

Clearview’s run in the US has been slightly more successful that its endeavors outside our borders. Thanks to a lack of strong privacy laws, not much can be done about Clearview’s scrape-and-sell tactics. But outside of the US, Clearview is finding it almost impossible to engage in shady business as usual.

A few countries have explicitly uninvited Clearview. The UK, after first threatening a $23 million fine for privacy law violations, finally settled on a $9.4 million fine that came with an order to delete all data pertaining to UK residents. The Italian government had the same problems with Clearview and its web scraping, ordering it to pay a $21 million fine for GDPR violations.

The same conclusion has been reached in France, adding to Clearview’s European tab. As Natasha Lomas reports for TechCrunch, French regulators have hit Clearview with the maximum possible fine for GDPR violations.

“Clearview AI had two months to comply with the injunctions formulated in the formal notice and to justify them to the CNIL. However, it did not provide any response to this formal notice,” the CNIL wrote in a press release today announcing the sanction [emphasis its].

“The chair of the CNIL therefore decided to refer the matter to the restricted committee, which is in charge for issuing sanctions. On the basis of the information brought to its attention, the restricted committee decided to impose a maximum financial penalty of 20 million euros, according to article 83 of the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation].”

That’s the statement from France’s privacy regulator. According to the CNIL’s findings, Clearview’s scraping/repackaging program violated privacy rights of citizens by not obtaining consent to collect the data. The repackaging for resale violated GDPR restrictions on processing of collected data. Finally, as noted in its statement, Clearview made things worse for itself by blowing off CNIL last year, when it informed Clearview of its initial conclusions and ordered it to delete data belonging to French citizens. That’s a GDPR violation of its own.

Whether or not France will be able to collect remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Clearview’s CEO Hoan Ton-That has issued yet another nonsensical non-defense of Clearview’s business model that basically says Clearview will continue its non-compliance with CNIL’s earlier order.

There is no way to determine if a person has French citizenship, purely from a public photo from the internet, and therefore it is impossible to delete data from French residents. Clearview AI only collects publicly available information from the internet, just like any other search engine like Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo.

If this is true, Clearview’s product is illegal everywhere in Europe. Clearview is admitting it cannot determine the origin of the images and data it scrapes, which also means it can’t comply with its own agreements/legal settlements where it has agreed to stop collecting in certain locales and delete data pertaining to these residents.

Ton-That claims to be “heartbroken” that France has “misinterpreted” Clearview’s business model. Of course, no one has misinterpreted anything. Clearview openly admits how it collects data and, for the most part, who it sells access to — a list that expands and contracts based on reactions to legal problems but generally still remains “anyone who’s interested.”

Presumably, Clearview will continue to do what it does while foreign regulators wave unpaid bills and set up No Trespassing signs. Clearview may think it can outlast the backlash, but none of this is going to just go away if Clearview ignores it. Sooner or later, it will run into something it can’t walk away from. And with each fine and lawsuit, its potential customer base continues to shrink.

Filed Under: cnil, facial recognition, france, gdpr, privacy, screaping
Companies: clearview, clearview ai

Mississippi Courts Are Helping Cops Keep Search Warrants Out Of The Public’s Hands

Legal Issues

from the much-despised-no-look-warrants dept

No-knock warrants remain under fire as they continue to needlessly increase the death toll of residents who often have no idea who’s violently entering their home and, therefore, respond in unpredictable ways. Supposedly obtained to increase officer safety, these warrants often seem like a handy way to put officers in “fear for your safety” mode, thus justifying the violence that follows.

But how often are they obtained? That’s tough to tell. Very few law enforcement agencies are willing to speak openly about their use/abuse of these warrants. Fortunately, public records and court proceedings will often provide the information cop shops and prosecutors won’t share freely.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Warrants and affidavits are part of the court record in criminal proceedings. Warrants and their accompanying paperwork are often sealed by court orders, preventing the public from seeing them until the government (judge, law enforcement agency, etc.) feels comfortable sharing them.

In Mississippi, however, the status quo is even worse than the hit-and-miss warrant access available elsewhere in the country. This ProPublica report shines a light on the seemingly concerted effort to keep warrant documents out of the public’s hands across the state. (via FourthAmendment.com)

The opening details the struggles of public defender Merrill Nordstrom, who was simply trying to challenge the warrant (which happened to be no-knock) that had led to her client’s arrest. Police had violently entered her client’s home searching for drugs — an assault predicated by the alleged sale of less than a gram of marijuana to an informant. No drugs were found but cops came across a gun her client wasn’t allowed to own.

Hoping to find warrants showing a pattern of violent no-knock raids predicated on alleged criminal acts that seemingly would not require this show of force, she went to the Greenville courthouse to read through other warrants. That’s when she discovered the court did not keep these records. Perversely, the local justice system was lending itself to injustice.

Though she had the search warrant for Bryant’s home, she couldn’t find records for most other raids in the city. The search warrants and supporting documents weren’t at the courthouse, even though the state Supreme Court’s rules require law enforcement to return warrants to the court.

Instead they were at the Greenville Police Department, hidden from view because law enforcement agencies, unlike the courts, can claim a broad public records exemption over records in their possession.

Wow. It’s as if no one in the Greenville courthouse is aware files can be copied, either physically or digitally. The police have no right to stash away the sole copies of search warrants in their own files, especially when it appears the sole purpose is to invert the presumption of openness that guides court proceedings.

It’s a statewide problem.

An investigation by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal and ProPublica has found that almost two-thirds of Mississippi’s county-level justice courts prevent access to some or all search warrants and related documents. So do municipal courts in at least five of the state’s 10 largest cities, including Jackson, the capital.

The court-enabled opacity takes multiple forms. Some courts violate state law by not requiring law enforcement to turn in search warrants and other documents once the warrants have been served. In some cases, courts don’t even bother having cops do the dirty work. They simply refuse to give the public access to these documents.

It’s this opacity that encourages abuse of no-knock warrants. The public defender discussed above discovered a majority of warrants issued in Greenville were no-knock. And most were likely approved by Municipal Judge Michael Prewitt, the only circuit judge in the area for the last two decades. Judge Prewitt admitted as much when questioned by the defender, stating that he’d issue a no-knock warrant to “search for a sweater.” His excuse? There’s a lot of drug crime in Greenville.

This information came from the judge himself. The court claimed it had no records of any searches authorized by Judge Prewitt, despite his two decades of service. And it didn’t. The only person with access to the documents was the person who rubber-stamped them to send cops searching for sweaters.

Prewitt said in an email to the Daily Journal and ProPublica that he personally keeps copies of all search warrants that are returned to him.

The courts in Mississippi are serving law enforcement, rather than the public. Multiple court clerks were questioned by ProPublica. Far too many admitted they weren’t in the business of assuring public records were accessible by the public.

“We don’t keep those,” said Lamar County Justice Court Clerk Sandra Owen.

“Usually the return goes back to the sheriff’s offices,” said Jones County Justice Court Clerk Stacy Walls.

“I hardly ever see search warrants — before, during or after,” said Marion County Justice Court Clerk Wynette Parkman.

Once again, government employees are conveniently pretending it’s impossible to make a copy of a court document before giving it back to a law enforcement agency. In other cases, they’re simply pretending the rule ordering law enforcement to provide these documents to the court following a search doesn’t apply to them or the cops.

There is some justifiable ignorance tucked into all the law enforcement subservience. In many cases, clerks aren’t made aware that warrants have been signed by judges. As such, there’s no way they would know documents cops are mandated to return to the court have not been returned.

But there’s also a lot of seemingly willful ignorance. Clerks seem to be aware of law enforcement’s obligations. However, they claim that, despite the clear wording, they’ve never been explicitly told these documents must remain in the hands of the court when (or, more likely, if) they’re returned by law enforcement officers.

The entire report is an infuriating read. The general tone that comes across is that both involved government parties — law enforcement and courts — believe the general public has no right to access these documents, despite them clearly being part of the public record, in terms of court proceedings.

Most respondents were at least able to hide their contempt behind shrugs and professed confusion. Some, however, were not.

Even some courts that do have search warrants on hand refused to let the Daily Journal and ProPublica see them.

“I cannot release any public information about search warrants,” said Kemper County Justice Court Clerk Lynn Puckett. “They are not public records and thank you for your call and you have a great day.” With that, she hung up the phone.

Nothing like a court clerk who’s not only wrong about the law but super-shitty about it.

That’s what decades of jurisprudence on the openness of courts has given the public, at least in Mississippi: a bunch of shrugs, middle fingers, and open flouting of court rules by people whose paychecks are signed by the people they’re screwing. Disgusting.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, mississippi, no knock warrants, transparency, warrant

Fifth Circuit Criticizes Pretextual Stops After Cops Kill A Man Because His Kid Threw A Candy Cane Out Of A Car Window

Legal Issues

from the more-lawful-stops-mean-less-meaningless-deaths dept

The Fifth Circuit is often the worst circuit when it comes to protecting constitutional rights. Every so often, it will make the right call, but most often it’s willing to let the government expand its power at the expense of the citizens it’s supposed to be serving. It does this often enough even the Supreme Court — which has spent decades making qualified immunity case law worse — feels compelled to reject rulings and send them back for a do-over.

But, once in a while, it does the right thing. Unfortunately, doing the right thing means cops behaving at their absolute worst results in a denial of qualified immunity. This recent decision [PDF] by the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court not only strips immunity from a Texas police officer, but it opens with a pretty scathing take on pretextual stops, which may signal the court will be less willing to grant as much leeway to officers who abuse this privilege to violate rights.

The decision opens with a few paragraphs about the history of pretextual stops and how they’re used to harass minorities and, with alarming frequency, result in their injury or death.

In 1996, the Supreme Court approved the use of pretextual stops in Whren v. United States. Since then, pretextual stops have become a cornerstone of law enforcement practice. Police officers follow a suspicious person until they identify a traffic violation to make a lawful stop, even though the officer intends to use the stop to investigate a hunch that, by itself, would not amount to reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Often pulled over for minor traffic violations, these stops create grounds for violent—and often deadly—encounters that disproportionately harm people of color.

This is not the court offering its opinion on pretextual stops or the harm they create. It’s backed by data.

When Whren was decided, the Court did not have what we have now—twenty-five years of data on the effects of pretextual stops. Indeed, the Whren Court differentiated pretextual stops from “extreme practices” like the use of deadly force. Today, traffic stops and the use of deadly force are too often one and the same—with Black and Latino drivers overrepresented among those killed—and have been sanctioned by numerous counties and major police departments.

The court notes that some law enforcement agencies and the governments that oversee them have restricted the use of pretextual stops, the practice is still standard operating procedure in much of the country. In lieu of probable cause or reasonable suspicion to engage in the true purpose of the stop, any minor traffic infraction — whether real or perceived — can be used to initiate a stop. And once the stop is initiated, law enforcement tends to engage in escalation, the sort of thing that can turn a failure to signal into drivers being beaten or killed by police officers.

And such is the case here, as the Fifth Circuit notes in this particularly devastating set of sentences.

The potential liability attending a policy of pretextual stops aside, their empirical consequences are clear: they lead to the unnecessary and tragic ending of human life. Here, a child threw a candy cane out the window. Twenty-five minutes later, the driver, her father, was dead.

We often use the phrase “innocently enough,” as in, “It started innocently enough.” But that phrase means nothing to cops, who haven’t seen anything momentarily inexplicable that can’t be viewed as suspicious.

On February 1, 2017, Tavis Crane was driving in Arlington, Texas with three passengers: Dwight Jefferson, Valencia Johnson, who was pregnant with Crane’s child, and Z.C., Crane’s two-year-old daughter. While Crane was stopped at a traffic light at approximately 11:38 p.m., Officer Elsie Bowden pulled up behind him. After the light turned green, Crane pulled away from the intersection and Bowden saw an object being tossed from the passenger’s side. She claims that she thought the object might be a crack pipe and called for backup; Roper responded.

This mistake could have been corrected long before Officer Roper killed Travis Crane in front of his pregnant wife and his two-year-daughter. But Officer Bowden is almost as much to blame for this tragedy, despite recognizing her error immediately after the stop commenced.

Bowden then noticed an object fall on the ground behind her, outside the window by Z.C. She recognized the object as the red top of a large plastic Christmas candy cane and realized the object thrown from the car was the candy cane’s clear bottom half. Bowden laughed about the misunderstanding and handed the red piece back to Z.C. But she did not send the family on. Rather, she returned to her vehicle and ran a warrant check, which found that Crane had warrants for several misdemeanors and a possible felony probation violation.

Everything escalated from there. First, there was the question about the misdemeanor warrants, which even the court finds Tavis Crane may not have been aware of. The alleged felony warrant was never verified. Instead, Officer Bowden called for backup. Officer Roper took it upon himself to treat Tavis Crane as a possible felon, despite never having received any other information from the officer who performed the stop (Bowden) or his on-board computer.

Roper escalated.

Roper opened the door, unholstered his pistol, and ordered everyone to put their “f—ing hands up.” Crane, Jefferson, and Valencia Johnson all put their hands up. He initially pointed his pistol at Jefferson before entering the car, climbing over Valencia Johnson, and pointing his gun at Crane.

According to the passengers, Roper put his arm around Crane’s neck. Roper contends that he grabbed the hood of Crane’s sweatshirt. All three officers continued to order Crane to open the door and turn the car off. Officer Johnson circled behind Crane’s car to move next to Bowden as she shouted “Tavis don’t do it.” The car engine began to rev, and the car shook as the brake lights turned on and off sporadically. Bowden reached for Roper in the back seat, and told Roper three times to “get out” of the car. Roper
remained in the car. […]

The passengers contend that when Crane, with Roper’s gun pointed at him, moved his hand to turn off the car in compliance with Roper’s order, Roper shot him, his head fell backwards, the engine revved and the car lurched backward, striking Bowden—by now behind the car—before moving forward and running over Bowden again and speeding off.

Officer Roper’s testimony does not jibe with what was observed by others. He claimed he did not shoot Crane until after the car moved and struck Officer Bowden. He followed his shooting of Crane by chasing down the now-mobile car, removing the keys from the ignition, and “shouting and cursing” at the person he had just killed.

The lower court decided the evidence on hand — which included dash cam video that did not capture the entire encounter — aligned more closely with Roper’s testimony. The Fifth Circuit says this conclusion is wrong while pointing out the flaws in the lower court’s logic.

The district court found that the gear could change and the car could move only with the conscious intention of Crane. But that conclusion ignores the other plausible explanation that the gears were shifted during the struggle between Crane and Roper, as Crane attempted to comply with Roper, and that the chokehold caused Crane to press down on the accelerator as an attempt to relieve the stress on his neck, as opposed to attempting to flee.

When essential facts remain in dispute (and the rights violation is clearly established), it’s far too early to come down on the side of the defendants.

And the violation is clearly established, even in the cop-friendly Fifth. Officer Roper’s assertions simply aren’t plausible and they cannot defeat examination of circuit precedent.

Accepting the facts as the passengers allege, Crane was shot while unarmed with Roper’s arm around his neck. Roper first argues that he had a reasonable fear that Crane might have a weapon. But from his position, Roper could see if Crane was reaching for a gun, as could the other officers outside the vehicle, yet none of them—including Roper—reported a suspicion of a weapon. Roper could not have reasonably suspected that Crane had a weapon.

And it’s still disputed whether or not Crane’s car posed a threat to officers. Evidence in dispute could go either way, but the Fifth says it’s entirely plausible the car posed no threat until after Officer Roper — deploying unlawful force in response to the threat posed at the moment — killed the driver and inadvertently turned a stopped car into a mobile one.

However, accepting the facts as Crane alleges, Roper shot Crane while the car was still in park and before the car began to move. As Roper was not at imminent risk of being expelled from a parked car, the vehicle did not in this sense pose a serious threat. Roper also asserts that Bowden and Officer Johnson were in danger, but at the time Roper shot Crane, Bowden and Officer Johnson were standing to the side of Crane’s car, not behind it, unlikely to be hit by the car. Ultimately, the car was not a threat until it began to move, which did not occur until Roper shot Crane.

Adding to the unlikelihood of an immunity defense is Officer Roper’s immediate escalation upon his arrival on the scene. In contrast to the rest of the officers, Roper acted hastily and violently when the situation did not call for either of these responses. He was the worst cop present and he turned a minor traffic stop into a completely preventable tragedy.

Officer Bowden demonstrated an admirable attempt to negotiate with Crane. Roper, on the other hand, shot Crane less than one minute after he drew his pistol and entered Crane’s backseat aside a pregnant woman and a two-year-old. Not only was the option to get out of the car—as opposed to shooting Crane—plainly available, but Bowden, reached into the backseat to touch Roper, repeatedly urging Roper to “get out” of the car, reflecting the sound view that they could not use deadly force to keep Crane from fleeing. But Roper remained in the car, shooting Crane just seconds later.

One officer handled this pretextual stop reasonably. Or, at least, almost. Officer Bowden should have told Tavis Crane he was free to go the moment she discovered the supposed “crack pipe” was just part of a plastic candy cane. She didn’t. Instead, she continued to run a warrant search and called for backup. And those actions resulted in a person being killed by a wholly unreasonable police officer who arrived on scene and needlessly escalated a routine stop into a homicide. Both officers could have prevented this tragedy. Officer Bowden, at least, attempted to do just that. But her unnecessary delay ended someone’s life. And that’s why pretextual stops continue to pose a threat to drivers everywhere.

Filed Under: 5th circuit, craig roper, elsie bowden, pretextual stops, qualified immunity, texas, travis crane

How Do You Sue A DAO?

Legal Issues

from the who-do-you-sue? dept

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are one of the most fascinating things to emerge from the crypto space. While everyone was going crazy over NFTs, almost all of the more interesting things were happening in the DAO space. DAOs are something of an experiment in being able to form new kinds of organizations quickly in non-traditional ways. It’s not a corporation. It’s a much more amorphous digital setup to bring together a group of people to work towards a common goal, often (but not always) involving some tokenization and voting power.

Of course, as with any such thing, some very silly things may happen by people confused about how things work. But, there are many (less high profile) DAOs that are showing how these vehicles can be useful in bringing a group of interested people together to accomplish something.

But, then, of course, there are the legal questions. A few weeks ago the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against Ooki DAO. In theory, the Ooki DAO was decided to allow members to make leveraged trades on digital assets. The lawsuit alleges that the Ooki DAO violated commodity trading laws, as well as failing to abide by know your customer (KYC) laws for financial products. But… that’s left open a big question: just how exactly does one sue an amorphous blob of people who have come together for this purpose?

And, for starters, how does one serve a lawsuit on a DAO?

The CFTC asked the court to accept a somewhat unique form of service: posting the lawsuit to a “help chat bot” on the Ooki DAO website, and then posting a copy to Ooki DAO’s public forums.

By choosing to organize itself as a DAO, the Ooki DAO has structured its business in a way that has erected significant obstacles to traditional service of process. The Ooki DAO has no headquarters or physical office location; no mailing address; does not appear to be registered in any jurisdiction; and does not have a listed president, secretary, treasurer, or agent appointed to accept service….

Instead, it is a completely decentralized unincorporated association of anonymous individual Ooki Token holders who have voted those tokens to participate in the business of operating the Ooki Protocol. The Ooki DAO offers a website to access the Ooki Protocol (ooki.com). Through that website, users may submit comments or requests for assistance through a Help Chat Box linked through the website. Separately, the website links to an Online Forum for Ooki Token holders to discuss and vote on Ooki DAO governance issues (forum.ooki.com)….

[….]

In addition, on the same date it filed the Complaint, the Commission provided copies of the summons, complaint, and additional related papers to the Ooki DAO via the Ooki DAO’s Help Chat Box (through a submission with attachments via the Help Chat Box); and further provided notice of the action via the Ooki DAO’s Online Forum (which does not permit the posting of attachments). In addition, the day after serving the summons, complaint, and certain additional related papers, the Commission served additional related papers on the Ooki DAO via the Help Chat Box, with contemporaneous notice of such service via the Online Forum. In these communications, the Commission requested that the Ooki DAO contact counsel for the Commission to discuss the litigation, including service of process.

As of the filing of this motion, the Ooki DAO has not responded to the request to contact counsel for the Commission

While the Ooki DAO did not respond to the CFTC’s request to contact the Commission… it did start discussing all this on its forums, as laid out in a further filing by the CFTC.

Shortly after filing the Motion for Alternative Service, the Commission discovered that, approximately contemporaneous with or shortly after the Commission filed the Motion for Alternative Service, a post appeared in the Ooki DAO’s Online Forum (forum.ooki.com) titled “Future of Ooki DAO” and discussing the Commission’s litigation against the Ooki DAO…. This demonstrates clear awareness by the Ooki DAO and its members of the Commission’s action. Thus, in the Commission’s view, this is relevant to the Court’s consideration of whether to grant the Motion for Alternative Service because it demonstrates the Ooki DAO’s actual notice of the action. The Commission thus requests that the Court consider this additional fact when deciding the Motion for Alternative Service.

And thus, the court okays service by… help bot.

The Motions are GRANTED and the Court orders that service of process on the Ooki DAO may be made in this action by providing a copy of the summons and complaint through the Ooki DAO’s Help Chat Box, with contemporaneous notice by posting in the Ooki DAO’s Online Forum

As the Politico article linked above notes, there are a variety of other legal questions around this case, but get ready for a lot of similar questions cropping up. One thing I will note is that, while it’s great to see experimentation, people really need to recognize that just because you’re experimenting with new forms of organizations, it doesn’t mean you get to just ignore the law. That’s not how any of this works.

Filed Under: cftc, dao, daos, service
Companies: ooki dao

AT&T Hit With $23 Million Fine For Bribing Illinois Lawmaker

Legal Issues

from the just-another-day-in-the-office dept

In just the last decade or so AT&T has been fined $18.6 million for helping rip off programs for the hearing impaired; fined $10.4 million for ripping off a program for low-income families; fined $105 million for helping “crammers” rip off their customers; fined $60 million for lying to customers about the definition of “unlimited” data; and accused of ripping off U.S. schools for decades.

The company’s also no stranger to using sleazy lobbying to get whatever it wants, whether that’s less competition, fewer consumer protections, rubber stamped mergers, or gigantic tax breaks that serve no useful public purpose. The vast, vast majority of the time the company faces absolutely no repercussion for its dodgy lobbying practices, especially those on the state level.

That luck recently ran out in Illinois, where the company was fined $23 million for bribing a state lawmaker’s ally in order to secure a key policy vote. According to a deferred prosecution agreement, the vote in question was a 2017 vote on Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) legislation that would have eliminated AT&T’s obligation to continue to provide landline service to all state residents.

AT&T of course wants to be free of having to provide dated landlines. Consumer groups are quick to note many of those landlines are used by old people who often can’t afford (or don’t understand how to use) cellular service, leaving them cut off from essential services and 911. They were also paid for on the back of millions in taxpayer subsidies, suggesting that taxpayers should have some say in the matter.

Instead of just making its case, AT&T used an intermediary lobbying firm to deliver $22,500 to former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan to influence his vote:

AT&T allegedly used a lobbying firm as an intermediary to make the payment and disguise its true purpose. US Attorney John Lausch’s office filed a one-count criminal information in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, charging AT&T Illinois with using an interstate facility to promote legislative misconduct. Former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza was indicted on five charges as a result of the same investigation.

As somebody that has covered AT&T for 22 years now, I know this kind of dirty pool happens pretty much constantly. In many states, AT&T all but owns the entirety of the state legislature, routinely literally writing state telecom policy and legislation. The vast, vast majority of the time, AT&T sees absolutely no penalty for the behavior, making this a rare occurrence.

AT&T’s no stranger to these kinds of tactics on the federal level either. In the last five years alone the company managed to secure a massive $42 billion tax break in exchange for doing nothing, gutted the FCC and its consumer protection authority, eliminated both net neutrality and broadband privacy rules, and is currently helping to gridlock the nomination of FCC nominee Gigi Sohn.

All to protect its regional telecom monopoly, stall competition, and ensure U.S. consumer protection enforcement is a feckless mess. You don’t get to enjoy six straight years of captured federal lawmakers without breaking more than a few of the nation’s already extremely pathetic lobbying rules (like that time AT&T paid Trump fixer Mike Cohen $600k to gain inside access to the Trump White House).

Filed Under: bribes, bribing, consumer protection, corruption, illinois, landlines, michael madigan, paul la schiazza, telecom
Companies: at&t

Comedians Eric Andre, Clayton English Sue Atlanta Airport Cops Over Racially Motivated Stops

Legal Issues

from the bias-cherry-on-the-forfeiture-cake dept

Lawsuits like these are filed all the time. Why? Because, just like out in the open world, opportunistic officers find it easy to coerce people into questioning and searches with the implication they’ll be delayed reaching their destination (or worse) if they don’t.

And, like everywhere else in the US, many of these stops are racially motivated, disproportionately targeting minorities. Minorities have more at stake and, consequently, are often more likely to view the searches and questioning as an inevitable part of the American experience.

But few lawsuits alleging racial bias and unconstitutional searches are filed by famous people. That’s because most cops know better than to screw with people with the resources to fight back.

Last year, comedian Eric Andre was quasi-apprehended by Clayton County law enforcement officers while trying to board a flight in Atlanta. The tactics used by law enforcement in this airport aren’t unusual. But they are especially devious. Cops hang out on the jet bridges connecting the terminal to the airplane, giving their targets limited options. There’s really nowhere else to go. And officers know it.

Andre complained about his involuntary encounter after it occurred early last year, claiming it was racial profiling. The Clayton County Police Department responded with a statement perhaps prematurely exonerating it of any wrongdoing.

“Mr. Andre chose to speak with investigators during the initial encounter,” the department said in a statement released to local news outlets. “During the encounter, Mr. Andre voluntarily provided the investigators information as to his travel plans. Mr. Andre also voluntarily consented to a search of his luggage but the investigators chose not to do so. Investigators identified that there was no reason to continue a conversation and therefore terminated the encounter.”

The department’s use of the word “voluntary” is incredibly suspect. On a narrow jet bridge, people are going to feel compelled to cooperate, even if officers don’t make any explicit threats.

The same thing apparently happened to another black comedian, Clayton (no relation to the county) English. Both comedians make the same allegation: cops stopped them on jet bridges because they were the only black people boarding these flights. Both were subjected to questioning about drug trafficking and multiple requests for consent to search them and their carry-on luggage. (h/t Josie Duffy Rice)

These two encounters are the subject matter of this recent lawsuit [PDF], helpfully provided to us by Axios. (The Associated Press delivered some of the earliest reporting but apparently found it impossible to secure a copy of the lawsuit.)

The lawsuit targets both the county and the individual officers who performed these stops, alleging the Clayton County PD’s “drug interdiction” program is nothing more than a big bag of constitutional violations that allow officers to pretend its biased stops are actually “random.”

But there’s nothing about these stops that’s random. That pretense is easily destroyed by actual statistics.

Although CCPD officers reportedly tell stopped passengers that they have been chosen at “random,” CCPD’s own records make clear that the officers conducting the jet bridge interdiction program select their targets based on race. From September 2020 through April 2021—a period that captures the stops of Plaintiffs Eric André and Clayton English—CCPD conducted 378 passenger interdictions in jet bridges where department records list the race of the passenger stopped. Of those, 56% of stopped passengers were Black. Given that only 8% of American airline passengers are Black (and given that the Atlanta Airport fairly represents that population), the probability of this happening randomly is staggering: significantly less than one in one hundred trillion.

Not only is it racially biased, the interdiction program is completely useless.

With regard to drugs, CCPD records show that, over an eight-month span that captures the period at issue in this complaint, CCPD officers conducting jet bridge stops found fewer than 0.08 pounds (36 grams) of illegal drugs, plus 6 prescription pills with no valid prescription, and CCPD only brought charges against two passengers.

Maybe it’s useless because officer bias leads them to stop the sort of people they think look like criminals (darker, swarthier, etc.) rather than actual criminals. Or maybe it’s because the drug interdiction program isn’t really about interdicting drugs. It’s about intercepting cash.

As for the currency seized in this same time frame by officers implementing the jet bridge interdiction program—totaling over $1,000,000—all but one of the passengers from whom CCPD seized money were allowed to continue on their travels. These seizures do not meaningfully combat drug trafficking, but they do provide a financial windfall for the department by taking advantage of the permissive civil standards for asset forfeitures and the reluctance of individuals (particularly individuals of color) to challenge seizures.

Hopefully, Clayton County’s finest and whatever representatives it sends to represent the elected will be given a chance to explain away all of these inconvenient facts.

And hopefully it will get a chance to explain how actions like these contribute to the claimed voluntary-ness of these sky bridge stops.

After moving him to the side of the jet bridge, one officer stood on Mr. English’s left while the other stood on his right, effectively blocking his path onto the plane.

One officer asked Mr. English to hand over his ID and boarding pass. Mr. English complied. He understood that he did not have any choice.

While holding his ID and boarding pass, the officers continued to ask Mr. English if he was carrying illegal drugs and began to ask questions about his profession, his reason for traveling to Los Angeles, and how long he planned to stay.

Possibly free to go… but to where? The officers had his ID and boarding pass. Beyond English was the plane he wanted to board. Behind him was a terminal that would become a particularly hellish purgatory without an ID or boarding pass. Only after English “consented” to a search of his luggage was he given back his ID and boarding pass and allowed to board the plane.

It’s a compulsory experience, purposely designed to appear consensual — one that uses all the right words and phrases that stop just short of demanding compliance while implying very explicitly that refusal isn’t really an option.

By ambushing passengers in this manner, the Unit’s officers compound the enormous, preexisting compulsion to cooperate with airport law enforcement by exploiting the passengers’ fear that they will create an untoward scene or will appear guilty, subversive, or dangerous to their fellow passengers. By design, all of these factors exert tremendous coercive pressure on an individual passenger in the jet bridge to acquiesce to the officers’ wishes. Those pressures are even greater for persons of color, given the history of racial profiling by airport security officers.

The comedians are hoping to find the drug interdiction program run by the CCPD to be declared unconstitutional. And they want each involved officer held personally responsible for violating their rights. We’ll see how many of these claims survive the first motion to dismiss (immunity of multiple varieties will be invoked), but the lawsuit — even if it ends up being tossed — puts plenty of uncomfortable facts on the record. And hopefully, if nothing else, it will lead to Clayton County abandoning this useless cash grab of a program, or at least, engaging in more oversight of officers’ actions.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, ccpd, civil asset forfeiture, clayton county, clayton english, drug interdiction, eric andre, georgia, legalized theft, racism, tsa

Federal Judge Says FBI Misled Magistrate When Seeking Safe Deposit Warrants, OKs Searches Anyway

Legal Issues

from the probable-cause-means-pretty-much-fine dept

Last March, the FBI raided a storefront safety deposit box service owned by US Private Vaults. US Private Vaults is all about privacy. It offers customers something akin to end-to-end encryption for their physical goods. Very little customer information is retained and only customers have access to their possessions. The company does not carry a master key.

This apparently led the FBI to believe the vault service was being used to store proceeds of criminal activity. It obtained a search warrant and yanked out the entire contents of the company’s Los Angeles storefront. Then it searched the contents of the boxes it had taken for evidence of criminal activity.

That would normally be fine, considering the FBI is in the busting criminals business. But it pointedly told the judge who approved the warrant that it wouldn’t do the very thing it began doing as soon as the boxes were in its possession. This is from the FBI’s warrant affidavit:

This warrant does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the safety deposit boxes. In seizing the nests of safety deposit boxes, agents shall follow their written inventory policies to protect their agencies and the contents of the boxes. Also in accordance with their written policies, agents shall inspect the contents of the boxes in an effort to identify their owners in order to notify them so that they can claim their property.

The FBI did actually notify some owners, but only via forfeiture proceedings under the theory the property was illegally obtained. It was a major haul for the agency — nearly $86 million in cash alone — and all from a single raid.

Some box owners sued in an attempt to block the FBI from seizing their property. Some of this litigation was successful. Most of the seizures, however, went unchallenged. The Institute for Justice stepped in to challenge seizures, pointing out the FBI’s seemingly deliberate lie about its plans for the boxes it had seized.

Unfortunately, the federal court handling this case doesn’t think the FBI’s lie matters, at least not in terms of determining probable cause. The court apparently agrees the magistrate was misled by the warrant affidavit which swore the FBI would not search the boxes to further its criminal investigation. But misleading another court is fine with this court, since the FBI probably would have just come up with another satisfactory excuse for its pretextual searches.

Here’s what little the court [PDF] has to say about the FBI’s true motives — the ones it concealed from the magistrate judge:

Given this evidence, there can be no question that the Government expected, or even hoped, to find criminal evidence during its inventory [of the seized boxes].

But that apparently doesn’t matter. A pretext still works if there’s a legitimate excuse for continuing to rummage through the boxes even after finding identifying info that would allow the FBI to notify the property’s owners. The FBI was also performing an inventory of box contents, and that’s all the pretext the government needed to turn an innocuous search for people’s info into a search for criminal evidence.

An impermissible investigatory motive must be the only reason the agents conducted the inventory.

[…]

Once the nests were seized, the warrant authorized the agents to inventory their contents, an inventory which was intended to “protect the FBI, [] to get an accounting of what’s actually there, [] to protect us against an accusation of theft or loss, [] to protect us against hazardous material, and … to get a full, you know, accounting of what’s there when we return it.”

[…]

It beggars belief that agents would have worked in this manner solely to invent a pretext for a criminal search of the box contents.

Yeah, well, I don’t think that really beggars belief. It sounds like the sort of thing law enforcement officers do all the time — work backwards to probable cause from mere pretexts, occasionally dressing things up with plausible deniability and/or parallel construction. Certainly none of this was presented to the judge when the warrant was sought. In fact, the opposite was asserted: the government would not be looking for criminal evidence, something it immediately began doing under the pretense it wanted to protect itself against accusations of wrongdoing.

As for the probable cause, the court says it still exists even if the government’s misleading statements about only caring about identifying box owners were excised.

The affidavit was rife with details of prior investigations into individual USPV boxholders that resulted in forfeiture, and it noted that the agents would have inferred that the inventory could lead to the potential discovery of criminal proceeds in certain boxes, which would then lead to forfeiture.

Probable cause to seize was probable cause to search, even if the FBI misled a judge and ignored its own policies. That’s the final call. This ruling does nothing for those challenging the searches. All it really does is refine the blueprint the government uses to bypass Fourth Amendment protections.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, civil asset forfeiture, fbi, safe deposit box
Companies: us private vaults