FLE

Court Rules E-Mail Search Without Warrant Violates Fourth Amendment Federal investigators overstepped constitutional bounds by searching stored e-mails without a warrant in a fraud investigation, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. In a case closely watched by civil-liberties advocates in the still-emerging field of Internet privacy, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that e-mail users have a reasonable expectation of privacy. "It goes without saying that like the telephone earlier in our history, e-mail is an ever-increasing mode of private communication, and protecting shared communications through this medium is as important to Fourth Amendment principles today as protecting telephone conversations has been in past," the appeals court said. The appeals court said the lower court correctly reasoned that e-mails stored at a service provider "were roughly analogous to sealed letters, in which the sender maintains an expectation of privacy. This privacy interest requires that law enforcement officials obtain a warrant, based on a showing of probable cause." Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd in Washington said the decision was being reviewed. The government could appeal to the full 6th Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court....
Court: Passenger can challenge traffic stop A passenger in a car pulled over for a traffic violation can challenge the stop for violating the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday. The justices held that the California Supreme Court was wrong in ruling that any constitutional violations when a police officer illegally stops a vehicle may be challenged only by the driver. The high court's opinion written by Justice David Souter said the passenger in such cases can be considered "seized," basically unable to leave the scene when the police make the traffic stop, and can also challenge the stop. Souter said any reasonable passenger would understand the police officers would not let people depart without permission or move around in a way that might impede an investigation....
Illegal Immigrant Cases Clogging Federal Courts If you drive by the federal courthouse in Las Cruces, N.M., on a Sunday night, you'll probably see something odd: the lights are burning. Workers in the Court Clerk's Office for the District of New Mexico are working late on Sundays, getting ready for Monday mornings. "[My staff] is stretched pretty thin," admitted Clerk of the Court Matt Dykman. "You'll have 50 or 60 new complaints coming in, and that starts at 8:30 [on a Monday], so there's no way to get ready unless you come in at 5 A.M." Instead, "they come in at seven on Sunday." New Mexico is one of five U.S. District Courts -- the others are Arizona, Southern California, Western Texas, and Southern Texas -- on the front line of the illegal immigration debate. An investigation into those courts reveals a system stretched to the breaking point. Cybercast News Service looked at each of the more than 90 U.S. District and Territorial Courts' criminal case filings since 2002. The five border districts saw an average of 3,730 criminal cases a year, compared to just 425 criminal cases in the other federal courts (see spreadsheet). The difference, say law enforcement and prosecutors on the border, is illegal immigration. More than half the criminal cases in each of the five border districts deal with federal immigration charges (an average of 2,264 cases a year). In New Mexico, 71 percent of all criminal cases in 2006 were immigration-related, while 70 percent of all cases in Southern Texas that year were linked to immigration....
US agencies disobey 6 laws that president challenged Federal officials have disobeyed at least six new laws that President Bush challenged in his signing statements, a government study disclosed yesterday. The report provides the first evidence that the government may have acted on claims by Bush that he can set aside laws under his executive powers. In a report to Congress, the non partisan Government Accountability Office studied a small sample of the bill provisions that Bush has signed into law but also challenged with signing statements. The GAO found that agencies disobeyed six such laws, while enforcing 10 others as written even though Bush had challenged them. Bush's signing statements have drawn fire because he has used them to challenge more than 1,100 sections of bills -- more than all previous presidents combined. The sample the GAO studied represents a small portion of the laws Bush has targeted, but its report concluded that sometimes the government has gone on to disobey those laws. None of the laws the GAO investigated included the president's most controversial claims involving national security, such as his assertion that he can set aside a torture ban and new oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act because he is the commander in chief. Such material is classified. Virginia Sloan , president of the Constitution Project -- a bipartisan think-tank that has condemned signing statements as a threat to the checks and balances that limit presidential power -- said yesterday that the GAO report shows that signing statements matter. "The findings of this report should come as no great surprise: When the president tells federal agencies they don't have to follow the law, they often don't," Sloan said. "This report should put to rest any doubts as to the real impact of signing statements. The Constitution does not bestow upon the president the power to simply ignore portions of laws he doesn't like."....
6 states defy law requiring ID cards Six state legislatures are defying a federal law requiring new driver's licenses that aim to prevent identity theft, fraud and terrorism. The states have passed laws in the past two months, saying the federal law has a steep cost and invades privacy by requiring 240 million Americans to get highly secure licenses by 2013. The 9/11 Commission urged the first standards for licenses to stop fraud and terrorists such as the Sept. 11 hijackers, who lied on residency statements to get licenses and state IDs. Lawmakers in Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Washington say new standards would be expensive to implement and result in a national ID card that compromises privacy. The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that it will cost states more than $11 billion. State resistance has drawn criticism from the Homeland Security Department. "I cannot imagine a state official anywhere that would want to have to testify before Congress about … how their non-compliant licenses contributed to a terrorist attack," department spokesman Russ Knocke said. Knocke said the federal government can't force states to comply. But he said each state's residents are likely to bring pressure on their local governments when they learn they'll be barred from boarding airplanes because their state's licenses don't meet federal standards. Airline passengers can use other government photo identification, such as passports and military IDs. Some lawmakers say any inconvenience is outweighed by the cost and potential privacy invasion for each state to create a photo database of license holders. "The people of New Hampshire are adamantly opposed to any kind of 'papers-please' society reminiscent of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia," said Neal Kurk, a Republican state representative from New Hampshire. "This is another effort of the federal government to keep track of all its citizens."....
Airport boss snared by no-fly list in U.S. Steve Baker, head of the London International Airport, knows first-hand the pain Canadian flyers may now face. On the day a new no-fly security list threatened to ground an unknown number of Canadian air travellers, Baker yesterday revealed he was on the U.S. version of that list -- which bars people from flying -- about a year ago. "There was someone with the exact name, Steven James Baker," he said. In fact, the first time his name popped up on the no-fly list was as he tried to fly out of his own airport to the U.S. "I was able to travel that day. But every time I flew I had to go through the same process," said Baker, president of the London airport. It took Baker four months of paperwork to convince U.S. authorities he wasn't the Steven James Baker on the U.S. Homeland Security list....