[HN Gopher] Court finds Fourth Amendment doesn't support broad s...
___________________________________________________________________
Court finds Fourth Amendment doesn't support broad search of
protesters' devices
Author : hn_acker
Score : 444 points
Date : 2026-02-27 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| hn_acker wrote:
| The original title is:
|
| > Victory! Tenth Circuit Finds Fourth Amendment Doesn't Support
| Broad Search of Protesters' Devices and Digital Data
| mothballed wrote:
| It's an awesome victory. But until the penalty for violating
| rights under color of law is something real (like serious jail +
| restitution, barred from further public employment, etc) they
| will keep doing it.
| patrickmay wrote:
| A good start would be requiring police officers to carry
| individual liability insurance so that municipalities aren't
| paying for these lawsuits. If someone can't get insurance, they
| can no longer be a cop.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't disagree, but can we really claim to have the rule of
| law if there is a class of people who can flagrantly violate
| criminal law and court orders and suffer zero criminal
| consequences?
| Zigurd wrote:
| Mayors, prosecutors, merchants, and local press get co-
| opted by police. This leads to systemic failures that,
| unfortunately, make dealing with this in criminal law less
| workable. Sometimes you gotta do what works.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's going to be cheaper for municipalites to have group
| insurance for this (or self-insure) than to have to pay the
| police enough that they can afford their own insurance.
| mothballed wrote:
| Ultimately it's the civil authorities and upper brass that
| want these intrusions. The insurance issue is easily worked
| around by hiring green recruits at a very high "bonus" to
| be used as basically burner employees to burn through their
| insurance and do the illegal stuff under their identity.
|
| It has to be a criminal thing because the top brass and
| civil servants need RICO like prosecution and tossed in
| jail along with the guy who gets the insurance ding.
| lazide wrote:
| It's already a (very real) crime to do a Conspiracy to
| deprive someone of their civil rights, which is what
| you're talking about. Occasionally someone gets sued
| under it, but it's rare.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| The whole point of requiring individual insurance is
| precisely that insurance will be _too expensive_ for people
| who are demonstrably high risk in that role, and less
| expensive for people who are low risk.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Some of the additional expense would be due to an
| individual risk profile, and some of the expense would be
| due to lack of bargaining power. The expense due to
| individual risk profile is a feature. The expense due to
| lack of bargaining power is not.
| noosphr wrote:
| Police have unions.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Then the department can pay for each officer's insurance.
| Zigurd wrote:
| If it's uninsurable in the private market, that's a hint.
| Maybe they could pledge the pension fund.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Before that we need a vast overhaul of qualified immunity for
| state officials and expansion of Section 1983 to cover
| federal officials. It is incredibly difficult to sue state
| officials for violating your rights because of how qualified
| immunity works and Bivens is even weaker when it comes to
| suing federal officials.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Yes, an awesome victory. But I believe a tech solution is gonna
| be superior to any legal solution. Any data considered "private
| and sensitive" should be accessible only by the person who owns
| it. Full stop.
| curt15 wrote:
| Tech solutions are toothless without laws to prevent
| authorities from detaining people indefinitely until they
| surrender access to their data. Efforts to prevent
| authoritarianism need to think more from the perspective of
| autocrats.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I think the top (tech) stories of the decade are likely: Privacy,
| AI and the energy transition.
|
| I hope that as a society we are starting to learn, and protect,
| the value of, and right to, privacy.
| sneak wrote:
| Germans have mass surveillance and they are perhaps the most
| privacy-conscious society in the world, because of their
| (relatively recent) authoritarian catastrophe.
|
| I doubt anyone else will learn the lesson without something
| similar happening. Even some Germans are forgetting it already.
| jfengel wrote:
| They may be the top stories, but they have never appeared on
| any list of voters' top concerns. It's always crime, jobs, the
| economy, inflation, and health care.
|
| People can say whatever they want to journalists, but they say
| different things to the politicians. Standing up for privacy
| does not get you elected and so we will continue to get anti-
| privacy laws and Attorneys General who won't enforce what we do
| have.
|
| The best you can hope for is a judge deciding how they want the
| Constitution to read, and that's far from the slam dunk you'd
| expect.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Then how did we get the laws we have now? How did we get the
| constitution and the amendments?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| By near definition, the lawmaking process mostly works on
| account of interested parties. There aren't a lot of issues
| that can get enough support merely by sheer mainstream
| pushback. That's why organizations spend time spreading
| awareness and lobbying (as well as coporate billionaire
| companies).
|
| It'd be much nicer if privacy was one of those mainstream
| topics. But that's not the case thus far. It's mostly
| propped into legislature by smaller organizations.
| jfengel wrote:
| A bunch of rich white slave-owners wrote the rules over the
| space of a few months in Philadelphia.
|
| One of the rules is that it's damn near impossible to amend
| the rules. It hasn't been done in a half century. (Setting
| aside one oddball originally written by those rich white
| guys but left in a drawer by accident.)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I wonder if this will shift over the next decade as
| Millenials start to become the voting bloc to appeal to, a
| generation that grew up with the internet (or at worst,
| started picking up the internet late in college/early in the
| workforce)?
|
| Among other factors, boomers grew up in a time where it
| wasn't unusual to announce your home address during a
| televised interview. Their ideas of privacy and locality is
| so fundamentally different from a generation that was the
| test bed for factors like cyberbullying, doxxing, mass
| trolling/harassment for users all around the world.
|
| And you know, spending your 30's/40's seeing blatant
| government overreach to harrass minorities and political
| opponents will help. Doubly so for Gen Z seeing this in their
| early adult years.
| chatmasta wrote:
| > crime, jobs, the economy, inflation, and health care
|
| These are the post-facto rationalizations voters cite to
| explain or defend their vote. But the actual decision is made
| much earlier than voting time, and it's one driven primarily
| by emotion and social influence. The "issues" are a
| convenient alignment mechanism but not the primary motivator.
|
| This should be obvious by the fact voters must choose between
| two viable candidates - the choice has been made for them,
| long before they get the luxury of sorting through which
| issues are most important to their vote.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > I hope that as a society we are starting to learn, and
| protect, the value of, and right to, privacy.
|
| I wish... but nope... see CA's and CO's requirements that OSs
| check ID
| runlevel1 wrote:
| If faith in the fairness and belief in the protection of the
| rule of law collapses much further, I suspect people will
| learn.
|
| The question is whether they'll learn in time to do anything
| about it.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| The Republican administration will ignore this court order as
| well
| RajT88 wrote:
| Indeed. Who holds the government accountable to its own laws?
| garciasn wrote:
| Congress < Supreme Court < The People
|
| We've had a significant breakdown in process here. Congress
| is deadlocked. The Supreme Court is corrupt. The only thing
| left are The People (protest / vote < civil disobedience <
| escalation beyond).
| lemoncucumber wrote:
| You've got the first two backwards. The real accountability
| mechanism in the constitution for a rogue
| president/administration is impeachment by congress (which
| is a proxy for the people in theory). Unfortunately neither
| enough of congress nor enough of the electorate cares if
| the administration breaks the law.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| In theory, yes. Any supreme court interpretation can be
| overruled by a congress that is truly in lockstep.
|
| Reality, is disappointing. Where we have a dealocked
| congress we try to switch around every 2 years while 9
| people in the courts can re-interpret how they wish with
| basically zero reprecussions, for life.
|
| Maybe the SCOTUS also needs terms limits thanks to modern
| medical advances. I don't think the founding fathers
| intended for courts to remain the same people for decades
| on end. It can be a very long term like the Federal
| Reserve, but we definitely need something.
| rnxrx wrote:
| How about we just start with SCOTUS having transparent
| (and enforced) ethics and corruption policies?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The issue lies in who enforces it. In theory, that's
| congress with the ability to impeach and convict members
| of SCOTUS.
|
| I've also thrown around ideas in my head of state SC's
| chief justices having a channel to court marshal a SCOTUS
| and eject them with a supermajority ruling. Or a band of
| federal judges. But there's so much more involved there I
| haven't begun to consider.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| The people, using the 4 boxes of liberty: Soap Box, Ballot
| Box, Jury Box, and lastly, the Ammo box.
| nilamo wrote:
| Are you suggesting people take up arms against police? Has
| that ever gone well for anyone, except as a quick way to
| die?
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Well, the other option is to live while bending the knee.
| Who needs rights anyway??
| mothballed wrote:
| I'm not suggesting it, but taking a look at history, a
| couple notables are the Battle of Athens and Cliven Bundy
| standoff. Bundy is still grazing his cattle on that land
| to this day.
| wahern wrote:
| Recent article on the younger Bundy, "Ammon Bundy Is All
| Alone. The anti-government militia leader can't make
| sense of his allies' support for ICE violence."
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/ammon-bundy-
| trump-...
| mothballed wrote:
| Ammon Bundy has held relatively libertarian opinions on
| immigration for a long long time. Since at least the days
| of the standoffs. His political ideals are closer to the
| old time westy _classical_ liberalism (something like
| founding era anti-federalists with a view of the law that
| essentially mirrors Bastiat) than they are to neo-
| conservatism.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| As a last resort when all other options have failed?
| Yeah, if you value democracy and don't want to bend the
| knee and live under an authoritarian state. Ammo box is
| listed last for a reason, of course, all other avenues
| should be pursued first.
|
| But that doesn't change the fact that the government
| isn't going to stop itself from overstepping the
| constitution, that duty falls with the people via
| protest, voting, lawsuits, and as a last resort, use of
| force.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| How is this not the exact reasoning MAGA uses for Jan. 6
| stebalien wrote:
| The case was filed in 2023.
| delfinom wrote:
| Eh? They can, but it makes any cases based on evidence gathered
| from the declared unconstitutional searches basically dead and
| easily tossed in courts.
| harimau777 wrote:
| I don't know if that applies if you get a Trump judge.
| fusslo wrote:
| > The warrants included a search through all of her photos,
| videos, emails, text messages, and location data over a two-month
| period, as well as a time-unlimited search for 26 keywords,
| including words as broad as "bike," "assault," "celebration," and
| "right," that allowed police to comb through years of
| Armendariz's private and sensitive data--all supposedly to look
| for evidence related to the alleged simple assault.
|
| That's an insane overreaction and overreach. There's some quotes
| from officers during the protests that are particularly
| troubling, too.
|
| The article links directly to the ruling:
| https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/0101...
|
| I wonder how the Sargent and Judge who approved these searches
| feel. If they take their jobs seriously, I do hope that they are
| more critical of search warrant applications in the future.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > I wonder how the Sargent and Judge who approved these
| searches feel. If they take their jobs seriously, I do hope
| that they are more critical of search warrant applications in
| the future.
|
| I guarantee they feel like they've been slighted _because_ they
| take their jobs seriously, and from their perspective they
| should have been allowed to do what they did. Power corrupts
| the mind as much as the bank account.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yup. To see this mentality on full display you just have to
| pull up videos of cops getting DUIs.
|
| They all act like it's the most insulting thing in the world
| that they get pulled over. They all use their status as cops
| to try and get out of the ticket. The cops that pull them
| over always treat them in the softest and most deferential
| way imaginable. And I'm sure more times than there are videos
| for, these cops get away with DUI which is why they are so
| incensed when the arresting cop doesn't play along.
| bitexploder wrote:
| The injury to their ego is tremendous. The ones that allow
| their authority to become their identity cannot mentally
| separate a challenge to this authority from a direct attack
| on themselves. To them it is quite literally the same thing
| and it is incredibly dangerous. It is how the authoritarian
| mind works, because to them it feels like survival.
| collabs wrote:
| Especially in the city of New York, I sincerely believe a
| police officer butting a reflective vest on the front
| dashboard of their illegally parked car is enough grounds
| for immediate dismissal/firing from the job and all
| retirement seized with no recourse. I don't know how we
| would make it legal but this is the kind of visible,
| petty corruption that makes people lose their respect for
| the system.
| ifh-hn wrote:
| That seems a little over the top of a parking
| infraction... Maybe they should be summarily shot too.
| 0x3f wrote:
| I don't think this is particularly unique to cops. When
| you're trapped and cornered, you desperately resort to any
| possible approach to get out of it. Acting incredulous or
| indignant when you know you've messed up, with the small
| hope it will get you out of it, is a very common human
| thing.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > with the small hope it will get you out of it
|
| That's the thing, with how much cops will put on the kids
| gloves if it's an officer I'm certain the hope isn't
| small that they'll get out of it. The videos you see of
| cops getting arrested they are almost always completely
| blasted.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| Just last week, two NYPD cops were indicted for evidence
| tampering for doing exactly that.
|
| The indicted cops responded to an off-duty cop's DUI crash.
| They texted each other on their personal phones so as not
| to create a record. They positioned their bodycams so as
| not to capture the incident. At one point, one of the cops
| held the other's to make it look as if he was still
| standing there while he secretly called their supervisor.
| They then let the drunk cop drive away. Hours later,
| another officer found the car parked on the sidewalk. That
| officer did finally arrest him.
|
| "These police officers did their job. We should not be here
| today," said union president Patrick Hendry, who accused
| the DA of targeting the officers. "He needs to support
| officers instead of going after them. Enough is enough."
|
| To their credit, these charges came based on a referral
| from NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau, though it was 4 years
| later.
|
| Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/nyregion/nypd-
| dui-coverup...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I doubt it, judges don't read warrant applications.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| If you think judges actually read warrants they sign, you're
| very mistaken. Some judges are signing dozens of these a day in
| between other things on their docket.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| _" Ninety-eight percent of warrant reviews eventually result
| in an approval, and over 93% are approved on first
| submission. Further, we find that the median time for review
| is only three minutes, and that one out of every ten warrants
| is opened, reviewed, and approved in sixty seconds or less.
| [1]"_
|
| Mind you, this data only represents the state of Utah's
| electronic "e-Warrant" system. It would not surprise me is
| results were not too different across other states.
|
| [1] https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-138/unwarranted-
| warra...
| UncleMeat wrote:
| FISA warrants were even more incredible, with well below 1%
| rejection rates.
|
| And then hilariously people would say that this is just
| evidence that the warrants are all written extremely
| carefully and conservatively.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| With enough data, you could _appear_ guilty of almost anything.
| koolba wrote:
| Particularly if you filter out the context when presenting
| the filtered data:
|
| "Wish I could be there. _I'd kill for such an opportunity._
| All the best and see you next time."
| seanw444 wrote:
| "Show me the man, I'll show you the crime."
| syntheticnature wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-
| Innocent/dp...
| NoSalt wrote:
| > _" If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most
| honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang
| him."_
|
| ~ Cardinal Richelieu (Cardinal and former Secretary of State
| for Foreign Affairs of France)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| This apocryphal quote was a statement about his
| overwhelming power (strong enough to hang people who have
| done no wrong), not on the mutability of the law. It is
| frequently mis-applied.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Why would he need _any_ lines then?
| Joker_vD wrote:
| The quote is indeed about the law being a nose of wax, to
| borrow an old English phrase, and how with sympathetic
| enough courts almost any decision could be upheld. But
| it's nothing new, precisely the same crime can yield
| drastically different judgements depending on e.g. the
| defensive attorney's experience.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > e.g. the defensive attorney's experience.
|
| Which is another way of saying the defense's wealth.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| He was powerful enough to hang someone on a flimsy
| excuse, but not so powerful that he did not need a flimsy
| excuse. Right in that sweet spot.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > I wonder how the Sargent and Judge who approved these
| searches feel. If they take their jobs seriously, I do hope
| that they are more critical of search warrant applications in
| the future.
|
| Cops often hate the people. They see the people as their
| enemies. Retaliation is commonplace. Their goal is to arrest
| people, not actually achieve peace and justice. DAs and judges
| are often similar. We've seen cases where highly respected DAs
| have continued to prosecute people _they knew were innocent_.
|
| This sort of thing is not a case of particular cops or DAs or
| judges not taking their job seriously. This is cops or DAs or
| judges thinking that they have a totally different job than
| they really should have.
| cess11 wrote:
| Cops often have the view that if they weren't allowed to be
| special and do things that are crimes for others, then
| society would collapse in a huge bloodbath. They tend to
| believe they are the 'thin blue line' between civilisation
| and barbarism, the front in a war against the unbridled
| animalism of the uncouth masses.
| ck2 wrote:
| "constitution-free zone"
|
| a phrase that should be impossible but due to wild corruption of
| the people who write law, it does
|
| all of Florida, all of Maine are in a "ha what constitution" zone
|
| https://www.aclumaine.org/know-your-rights/100-mile-border-z...
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/bill-rights-border-fou...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This is in Colorado Springs. What about the 100 mile border zone
| where the federal government pretends all rights are suspended?
| antonvs wrote:
| The current government believes in some sort of transitive
| property of 100 mile border zones. Mathematics hasn't quite
| caught up with this yet.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Denver International Airport has a customs zone (as all
| international airports do), and is only 86 miles from Colorado
| Springs. AFAIK they've never explicitly restricted their policy
| to land & sea borders.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| That's correct, the zone is also 100 miles around every
| international airport.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Historically, they've considered land borders with Canada and
| Mexico, coastlines on the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf of
| Mexico, as well as the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway to
| be the edges of the 100 mile "reasonable distance":
|
| https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
|
| This page:
|
| https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2025/jul/1/understand.
| ..
|
| Is one of the few that includes international airports, but
| then they go on to use the "200 million Americans within 100
| miles of a border" statistic that's only accurate if you're
| only counting the land, sea, and Great Lakes borders. Which
| is still insane.
|
| If you add a 100 mile circle around every international
| airport, that's basically every major population center in
| the country.
|
| Sounds like yet another absurd misrepresentation, let's see
| if anyone can call them on it.
| pklausler wrote:
| Having lived (or maybe more accurately "resided") in the
| Springs for a few years, this story didn't surprise me at all.
| jandrese wrote:
| Is this going to be appealed up to the Supreme Court? They are
| usually pretty eager to expand the power of qualified immunity so
| this judgement may be short lived.
| nickff wrote:
| Interestingly (at least to me), the Tenth Circuit doesn't get
| appealed very often, and holds up fairly well on appeal, with a
| 50% reversal rate on appeals that are heard.
| https://reason.com/volokh/2024/07/02/which-circuit-had-the-h...
| stvltvs wrote:
| They probably won't because they don't want a nationwide
| precedent if it's upheld by SCOTUS.
| shevy-java wrote:
| So, this is not surprising in that many courts have found a
| similar result. That is, the amendments usually protect the
| freedoms; sometimes regular folks extend it to far (e. g.
| government having zero possibilities which is also not true - see
| Audit the Audit channel and others). But one thing that is
| interesting is that these public departments, be it cops or some
| civil institution (but usually police departments), still try it.
| The idea is that many people will comply rather than dare resist.
| I think this is an institutionalized level of abuse. A common
| person should expect these government representatives to KNOW the
| law. The only reason these representatives still try to it to go
| to court, is because they WANT to break the law. This should
| become illegal. It wastes time, money, resources, by public
| representatives. The court system should change; the assumption
| that everyone is a legal body, SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WHEN A
| GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE KNOWS THAT SOMETHING IS AGAINST THE LAW
| and they still try to go for a court proceeding. That is
| deliberate abuse. Why do taxpayers have to pay for that?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-02-27 23:00 UTC)