SCOTUS: No sniffs without a warrant

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:50:00 +0000

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police could only use sniffer dogs to investigate a property and its surroundings if they first obtained a warrant. "A police officer not armed with a warrant may approach a home and knock, precisely because that is no more than any private citizen might do," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the 5-4 majority decision.

The decision upheld a 2011 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court suppressing evidence uncovered at Joelis Jardines' home with the help of Franky, a chocolate Labrador retriever with a strong record of sniffing out drug stashes. The Economist explained the justices' reasoning, the decision and its relevance to privacy laws more broadly:

Documents show spike in warrantless surveillance

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:19:00 +0000

According to government documents obtained by the ACLU, the Justice Department's use of warrantless phone and internet tapping has increased 600 percent in the past decade.

Using methods that don't require a probable-cause warrant, the DoJ has been able -- with little effort -- to track phone and internet communication information, including numbers dialed and email senders and recipients. Under the Obama administration, between 2009 and 2011, there was a 60 percent rise in orders from the DoJ for warrantless tapping, with 37,616 original orders sent to judges in 2011 compared to less than 6,000 in 2001.

In order to surveil communications using "pen register" or "trap and trace" methods, federal agents need only send an order to a federal judge to ceritfy that the information being gathered (phone numbers, email addresses) is relevant to an ongoing investigation. To read the content of emails or listen in to calls, a warrant is needed.

The ACLU's Noami Gilen's posted on the organization's blog:

Salon.com > Warrant

SCOTUS: No sniffs without a warrant

Documents show spike in warrantless surveillance