House conducts hearing on GPS Act A recent congressional hearing addressed the proposed Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act which would require a search warrant to obtain GPS or CSLI data from phone companies. The bill is authored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon). John Ramsey, of the Federal Law [...]
Cyber Crimes
A disagreement over a Facebook relationship status recently ended with gunshots being fired into the air outside a Georgia Waffle House. In February, a husband and wife unfriending someone on Facebook ended with that person’s father shooting the couple. As these events happen, they get a great deal of news coverage. The stories are [...]
Cyber Crimes
A Georgia federal district court has ordered suppression of evidence obtained from cell phones because of an unreasonable three month delay in searching the phones. United States v. Shaw, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32624 (N.D. Ga. 2012). The phones had been searched incident to arrest and were placed into inventory. Months later, the [...]
Cyber Crimes
The Eleventh Circuit held that compelled production of unencrypted files violates the Fifth Amendment as it would be testimonial, and the “foregone conclusion” doctrine does not apply. In Re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum Dated March 25, 2011, 671 F.3d 1335 (11th Cir. 2012). The case began with a child pornography [...]
Cyber Crimes
The Colorado District Court is the latest to weigh in on the popular issue of whether a person can be forced to disclose a password or unencrypted files. In United States v. Fricosu, the court found that the defendant’s Fifth Amendment right is not implicated by requiring production of an unencrypted version of the files. 2012 U.S. [...]
Cyber Crimes