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Articles by Anthony Accurso

Colorado Supreme Court: Police Officer’s ‘Hunches’ Cannot Establish Probable Cause, Determination Requires Consideration of Facts Weighing in Favor and Against Probable Cause

by Anthony W. Accurso

The Supreme Court of Colorado held that facts used in determining probable cause to conduct a warrantless search must include those that militate against a finding of probable cause.

Colorado State Patrol Trooper Christian Bollen was watching eastbound traffic on I-70 around 8:00 a.m. on the ...

Kentucky Supreme Court Announces Obtaining Real-Time CSLI Data Constitutes a Search Under Fourth Amendment, Addressing Legal Question U.S. Supreme Court Explicitly Left Open in Carpenter

by Anthony W. Accurso

In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Kentucky upheld a suppression order, holding that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their real-time cell-site location information (“CSLI”) and that searches thereof are subject to the Fourth Amendment.

Late one evening, Dovontia Reed ...

Variability in Records Requests Obscures Police Use of Surveillance

by Anthony W. Accurso

An effort by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) to track police use of surveillance technologies is butting up against the decentralized nature of our law enforcement networks in that open-records requests to different agencies for the same information result in wildly variable information — if anything ...

Fog Data Science, Your Hometown Data Broker

by Anthony W. Accurso

Criminal Legal News has previously reported on data broker companies — companies that buy and sell data on consumers, most often location data harvested from mobile apps. Fog Data Science is one such company, though one that some believe is quite possibly more dangerous to ...

Sixth Circuit: District Court Confused ‘Attenuation Doctrine’ and ‘Inevitable Discovery Exception’ in Applying Exclusionary Rule

by Anthony W. Accurso

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vacated the U.S. District Court for the District of Western Tennessee’s denial of a defendant’s suppression motion, ruling the court applied the standard for judging exceptions to the warrant requirement under the attenuation doctrine instead of the ...

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Announces New Rule Governing Warrants for CSLI and Tower Dumps, Suppresses CSLI Evidence Because Warrant Lacked Particularized Facts Establishing Nexus Between Defendant’s Use of Cell Phone and Charged Crimes

by Anthony W. Accurso

The Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) of Massachusetts validated one warrant for cell site location information (“CSLI”) while finding a second deficient for failure to establish probable cause, and it issued prospective guidelines for CSLI warrants going forward.

Seven businesses around the Boston area were subject to ...

Wyoming Supreme Court: Preventing Door From Slamming in Face of Police Officer Does Not Constitute Implied Consent to Enter Home Without a Warrant

by Anthony W. Accurso

In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Wyoming held that the district court erred in ruling an officer had implied consent to enter a suspect’s home without a warrant because the totality of circumstances would not lead a reasonable officer to believe he ...

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Announces Challenge to SORNA-Based Illegality of Sentence Claim Cannot Be Waived, Allowing for Challenge at Any Time — Even if First Raised on Appeal

by Anthony W. Accurso

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that challenges to the legality of an imposed sentence — including registration requirements under SORNA — cannot be waived and can thus be brought at any time.

For various sexually-related offenses, Shaune Jarel Thorne, Sr. was sentenced on April 9, ...

Next Gen Facial Recognition Identifies Your Associates, Too

by Anthony W. Accurso

A company called Ventra in February 2022 presented its new facial recognition software that rapidly searches voluminous video footage for a face and then identifies the faces of other people who came in contact with the target.

The relevant portion of the presentation to surveillance research ...

Drone Company Is Establishing Cozy Relationship With Police

by Anthony W. Accurso

The revolving door between government agencies and private corporations has been well documented in industries like healthcare, defense, and fossil fuels, along with the democracy-eroding effects of such relationships. A worrying new trend shows surveillance companies and law enforcement agencies establishing such relationships.

While Amazon recently ...

 

 

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