NSA: Car smashes into police vehicle at Fort Meade; 1 dead

Posted on by

By Meredith Somers And Lolita C. Baldor Associated Press

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) Two men dressed as women smashed a stolen car into a police vehicle after they disobeyed commands at the closely guarded gates of the National Security Agency on Monday, prompting police to open fire.

One of the men died, the other was injured and a police officer also was taken to a hospital. Details remained unclear hours later. Initial images from the scene showed emergency workers loading the uniformed officer into an ambulance. Nearby were a dark-colored SUV and an SUV emblazoned with "NSA Police," both heavily damaged.

It was not known why the men wound up at the gate at Fort Meade, a sprawling military post that houses the National Security Agency, or why they did not obey orders from NSA police. Fort Meade is just off Interstate 295 between Baltimore and Washington.

A helicopter hovers over Fort Meade after a vehicle rammed a gate to the National Security Agency, Monday, March 30, 2015 in Fort Meade, Md. One person was killed in a firefight that erupted Monday after a car with two people tried to ram a gate at the Fort Meade, Md., military base near a gate to the National Security Agency, according to preliminary reports cited by two U.S. officials. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (Andrew Harnik/AP)

The men were dressed as women, said a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing case. It also was unclear exactly what the men were wearing.

The NSA said in a news release that investigators have not yet determined how the man in the vehicle died, and the conditions of the wounded man and officer were not disclosed.

An agency officer gave the driver "routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus," but the driver disobeyed them, the release said. The driver then accelerated toward a police vehicle blocking the road, and police then opened fire.

An FBI spokeswoman said earlier in the day that the incident was not believed to be linked to terrorism. The NSA said the incident was contained to the perimeter of the secure campus.

The car that rammed the police vehicle had been stolen Monday morning from a hotel in Jessup, Maryland, said Mary Phelan, a spokeswoman for the Howard County Police Department. She declined to name the hotel, citing the ongoing investigation, or release any further details, referring all questions to the FBI.

Read more here:

NSA: Car smashes into police vehicle at Fort Meade; 1 dead

Posted in NSA

Man dressed as woman killed NSA security gate

Posted on by

Story highlights Two people tried to enter the main gate to enter the headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. One died at the scene, and another was wounded, the NSA says.

"Shortly before 9:00 AM today, a vehicle containing two individuals attempted an unauthorized entry at a National Security Agency gate," Jonathan Freed, NSA director of strategic communications, said in a statement. "The driver failed to obey an NSA Police officer's routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus. The vehicle failed to stop and barriers were deployed."

NSA police on the scene fired on the vehicle when it accelerated toward a police car, blocking its way, according to the NSA. One of the unauthorized vehicle's two occupants died on the scene. The other was hospitalized, as was an NSA police officer.

The two men who officials say tried to ram the main gate at NSA headquarters were dressed as women, according to a federal law enforcement official.

Investigators are looking into whether the men were under the influence of drugs following a night of partying, a federal law enforcement official said.

A man reported his car stolen from a hotel not far away from NSA Headquarters and said he had been with two men who had taken his car. Cocaine was found in the vehicle. The Howard County Police Department confirms that a Ford Escape reported stolen in Howard County, Maryland, is the vehicle involved in the incident.

The FBI said Monday morning that it was conducting an investigation with NSA police and other law enforcement agencies, and interviewing witnesses on the scene. The incident took place near one of the gates to the complex, far from the main buildings. The FBI said they did not think terrorism was related to the incident.

"We are working with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland to determine if federal charges are warranted," the FBI said in a statement.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said President Barack Obama had been briefed on the incident this morning.

This is the second security incident this month involving the NSA. At the beginning of March, a former state correctional officer was arrested, accused in a string of Maryland shootings, including one at Fort Meade. Gunshots struck a building near the NSA office, according to a police report.

See original here:

Man dressed as woman killed NSA security gate

Posted in NSA

NSA weighed ending phone program before leak

Posted on by

........................................................................................................................................................................................

FILE In this June 6, 2013 file photo, a sign stands outside the National Security Agency (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md. The NSA considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed its meager counter terrorism benefits. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

WASHINGTON The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counterterrorism benefits.

After the leak and the collective surprise around the world, NSA leaders strongly defended the phone records program to Congress and the public, but without disclosing the internal debate.

The proposal to kill the program was circulating among top managers but had not yet reached the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander, then the NSA director, according to current and former intelligence officials who would not be quoted because the details are sensitive. Two former senior NSA officials say they doubt Alexander would have approved it.

Still, the behind-the-scenes NSA concerns, which have not been reported previously, could be relevant as Congress decides whether to renew or modify the phone records collection when the law authorizing it expires in June.

The internal critics pointed out that the already high costs of vacuuming up and storing the to and from information from nearly every domestic landline call were rising, the system was not capturing most cellphone calls, and the program was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials said. They worried about public outrage if the program ever was revealed.

After the program was disclosed, civil liberties advocates attacked it, saying the records could give a secret intelligence agency a road map to Americans private activities. NSA officials presented a forceful rebuttal that helped shape public opinion.

Responding to widespread criticism, President Barack Obama in January 2014 proposed that the NSA stop collecting the records, but instead request them when needed in terrorism investigations from telephone companies, which tend to keep them for 18 months.

Yet the president has insisted that legislation is required to adopt his proposal, and Congress has not acted. So the NSA continues to collect and store records of private U.S. phone calls for use in terrorism investigations under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Many lawmakers want the program to continue as is.

The rest is here:

NSA weighed ending phone program before leak

Posted in NSA

Can the Police Occupy My Property?

Posted on by

A recent case has people wondering if, how, and when police officers can use their property, including their house, to stage law enforcement operations.

A Henderson, NV family claimed officers violated the Third Amendment ("[n]o Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner") by occupying their homes to investigate a domestic dispute at a neighbor's house. A federal court found that, while officers may have committed some other constitutional violations, the amendment didn't apply because the officers were not soldiers.

So is there any limit to when the police can use your property as a base of operations?

No Third Amendment Protection

The District Court in Nevada dismissed the families' Third Amendment claims because it did not consider municipal police officers as soldiers:

I hold that a municipal police officer is not a soldier for purposes of the Third Amendment. This squares with the purpose of the Third Amendment because this was not a military intrusion into a private home, and thus the intrusion is more effectively protected by the Fourth Amendment. Because I hold that municipal officers are not soldiers for the purposes of this question, I need not reach the question of whether the occupation at issue in this case constitutes quartering, though I suspect it would not.

Therefore, it seems likely that the police would have significant leeway in setting up a base of operations on a citizen's private property. It's generally agreed upon that officers may set up speed traps on private property, including driveways, to monitor public highways.

Fourth or Fifth Amendment Protection?

The Fourth Amendment prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures," a may cover officers occupying private property. Weather officers' presence on private property is unreasonable would likely come down to the property owner's "reasonable expectation of privacy." This determination that could depend on whether officers are inside an owner's home, which carries a higher privacy expectation, or outside where the expectation of privacy is lessened.

The Fifth Amendment's Eminent Domain Clause bars the government from taking personal property for public use without "just compensation." Although courts have expanded the definition of a taking to beyond the forced sale of a home, it remains to be seen whether police officers temporarily occupying private property would apply under the amendment.

Read more:

Can the Police Occupy My Property?

Volokh Conspiracy: Affixing ankle bracelet to monitor suspect is a search, Supreme Court holds

Posted on by

The case is Grady v. North Carolina. Held: Forcing someone to wear an ankle bracelet to monitor location is a Fourth Amendment search. The new decision extends the Jones search doctrine to searches of persons, and it provides more opportunity to ponder what the Jones test means. Ill start with the history, then discuss the new decision, and then offer some thoughts on the new case.

I. A Brief History of Fourth Amendment Searches

First, some Fourth Amendment history. As I explained in this article, the Supreme Court had not identified a clear test for what counts as a Fourth Amendment search until Katz v. United States (1967). In Silverman v. United States (1961), the Court had indicated that a physical intrusion was enough to be a search but left open what beyond physical intrusion counted. In Katz, the government had taped a microphone to the top of a public phone booth and listened to the microphone feed from a listening station nearby when Katz placed a call. The Court in Katz announced that it could no longer follow earlier caselaw, which it claimed had imposed a trespass test. The Court held that the governments conduct triggered the Fourth Amendment:

The Governments activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioners words violated the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth, and thus constituted a search and seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The fact that the electronic device employed to achieve that end did not happen to penetrate the wall of the booth can have no constitutional significance.

Justice Harlan concurred. According to Harlan, the key was that Katzs expectation of privacy in the phone booth was one society was prepared to recognize as reasonable. When Katz went into the phone booth, closed the door, and put a coin in the coin slot, the phone booth became a temporarily private place whose momentary occupants expectations of freedom from intrusion are recognized as reasonable. The full Court later adopted Justice Harlans concurring opinion, usually known as the reasonable expectation of privacy test, or just as short hand, the Katz test. (Im ignoring subjective expectations of privacy for reasons explained here.)

In United States v. Jones (2012) the Supreme Court held that the government conducted a search when it installed a GPS device to the underbody of a suspects car to monitor his location over time with intent to get information. The Court reasoned that the trespass test that Katz said existed before Katz still existed, and that because installing a GPS device on a car is trespassory, installing the GPS device was a trespass search without having to reach the issue of whether it violated a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Katz test. Because the trespass occurred with the intent to get information, it was a Fourth Amendment search.

As I detailed in this article and I have blogged about occasionally since then, this history leaves us unsure of what the Court thinks the Jones test is. Is the test physical intrusion as in Silverman, or is it trespass? If its trespass, which kind of trespass, given that trespass is an accordian-like term that has both broad and narrow meanings? And if attaching a GPS device to the underbody of a car was trespassory in Jones, why wasnt taping a microphone to the top of a phone booth trespassory in Katz?

II. Grady v. North Carolina

That brings us to the new case. In Grady, the defendant is a recidivist sex offender who was ordered to wear an ankle bracelet that determines his location using GPS. The bracelet was installed against his consent, and he was ordered to wear it for life.

The defendant argued that this violated his Fourth Amendment rights under the Jones case, but the North Carolina Court of Appeals disagreed. First, it relied on its own precedent that had earlier rejected the analogy to Jones for a bizarre reason: Because Jones arose in a motion to suppress rather than a civil case, it was inapplicable and using the ankle bracelet was not a search. Second, the earlier precedent had relied post-Jones on dicta in a pre-Jones North Carolina Supreme Court case, Bowditch, that had suggested that sex offenders have a lesser expectation of privacy against monitoring.

Original post:

Volokh Conspiracy: Affixing ankle bracelet to monitor suspect is a search, Supreme Court holds

US Supreme Court: GPS tracking could violate the Fourth Amendment

Posted on by

Forcing someone to wear a location tracker apparently constitutes a Fourth Amendment "search" - the Supreme Court effectively said so when ruling on a North Carolina case where a convicted sex offender was forced to wear a GPS monitor at all times in 2013. The offender challenged the court, and while the state's court first ruled in favor of the tracker, stating it was no search at all, the Supreme Court said that didn't follow that court's precedents. And what the Supreme Court says, goes.

"It doesn't matter what the context is, and it doesn't matter whether it's a car or a person. Putting that tracking device on a car or a person is a search," said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), talking to The Atlantic. Lower courts will now have to consider whether attaching a GPS tracker to both people and property constitutes a reasonable search. Lynch believes that the lifelong GPS tagging is an unreasonable one -- and the EFF is looking at similar cases in other states. She added: "Sex offenders - it's the easiest class of people to place these kinds of punishments on, but I worry that we start with sex offenders and then we go down the line to people who've committed misdemeanors."

[Image credit: Getty Images/Flickr RF]

Excerpt from:

US Supreme Court: GPS tracking could violate the Fourth Amendment

Supreme Court questions lifelong monitoring of sex offenders

Posted on by

The Supreme Court raised constitutional doubts Monday about the lifelong monitoring of sex offenders and other criminals with the use of GPS devices.

In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled for a North Carolina man and said this monitoring is a search under the Fourth Amendment that must be justified as reasonable based on all the circumstances.

Since 2005, 40 states have adopted laws that provide for GPS monitoring of ex-offenders. California was said to have the first and largest monitoring program. The court was told 9,300 sex offenders in California were being tracked, along with some gang members.

Mondays decision stops well short of striking down such monitoring, but it opens the door for ex-offenders to argue for limits.

A North Carolina lawyer who appealed the case praised the court for putting some restrictions on monitoring.

This is a significant case. North Carolina and other states have basically taken the position that they can strap a GPS monitoring device to whomever they choose. The court here is basically saying, no, any such search must be reasonable. In many cases, thats going to be impossible to demonstrate, said Luke Everett, a lawyer in Durham.

After a 20-minute hearing in 2013, Torrey Grady was ordered to enter a GPS monitoring program that would require him to wear an ankle bracelet for the remainder of his natural life. He was not on probation, but he had been convicted of a sex offense when he was a teenager in 1997 and of taking indecent liberties with a child in 2006.

North Carolinas law calls for monitoring of repeat offenders. He appealed the order, arguing it was an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment. A North Carolina court ruled that monitoring was not a search at all, and the North Carolina Supreme Court refused to hear his claim.

The Supreme Court issued a summary reversal Monday in Grady v. North Carolina and said the monitoring was governed by the Fourth Amendment. A state conducts a search when it attaches a device to a persons body, without consent, for the purpose of tracking that individuals movement, the justices said.

But they note the Fourth Amendment forbids only unreasonable searches, and they sent the case back to North Carolina for judges there to consider whether the lifelong monitoring of Grady was reasonable.

Read more:

Supreme Court questions lifelong monitoring of sex offenders

The Walking Dead season 5 finale recap: Bloody Rick takes a lurch to the right

Posted on by

Bloody Rick: He didn't let the walkers in to Alexandria but Rick (Andrew Lincoln) sure knew what to do once they arrived. Photo: AMC

THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS

They were the words we knew had been coming all along. "Rick, do it."

That was all the urging Rick needed to pull out the pistol Deanna had tried to ban and, at her command, execute Pete, the wife-basher who had just slit the throat of Deanna's peace-and-light architect husband Reg.

A place to call home? The survivors contemplate the welcoming but somehow unsettling environs of Alexandria. Photo: AMC

And with that, the Second Amendment triumphed over wishy-washy liberalism and The Walking Dead lurched unmistakably to the right.

Advertisement

Not that it hasn't done so before, and not to say that it will stay there, for above all else The Walking Dead is an arena in which competing political philosophies do gladiatorial combat - not to the death so much as "until next time".

And with the finale drawing a record audience of 15.8 million viewers in the United States, and with catch-up viewers topping the 20 million mark, there are likely to be a lot of next times.

This won't end well: Rick and Pete (Corey Brill) fast became enemies, and rivals for the affections of Pete's wife Jessie (Alexandra Breckenridge). Photo: AMC

Read more:

The Walking Dead season 5 finale recap: Bloody Rick takes a lurch to the right

Burt Neuborne – Recovering Madison’s Music: Toward a Democracy-Friendly First Amendment – Video

Posted on by


Burt Neuborne - Recovering Madison #39;s Music: Toward a Democracy-Friendly First Amendment
The current Supreme Court majority reads the First Amendment as if James Madison threw a pot of ink at the wall and allowed the splatter to dictate the order and placement of the provisions...

By: Berkeley Law

Continue reading here:

Burt Neuborne - Recovering Madison's Music: Toward a Democracy-Friendly First Amendment - Video

Volokh Conspiracy: No drone surveillance of crime scene (even from 150 feet above), police say

Posted on by

Does the First Amendment include a right to gather information using flying drones? The federal trial court decision in Rivera v. Foley (D. Conn. Mar. 23) is to my knowledge the first court decision to consider the matter, and its largely skeptical of the First Amendment claim though of course it wont be the last word on the subject, both because it is just a trial court opinion, and because it mostly holds that any right to use drones wasnt clearly established at the time of the events.

Here are plaintiff Pedro Riveras factual allegations (keep in mind that they are just the allegations):

[Rivera] is employed as a photographer and editor at a local television station. [O]n February 1, 2014, he heard on a police scanner that there was a serious motor vehicle accident in the City of Hartford. [Rivera] responded to the accident site and began operating his personally owned drone, which [he] describes as a remote-controlled model aircraft outfitted for recording aerial digital images, to record visual images of the accident scene. [Rivera] was standing outside of the area denoted as the crime scene by officers responding to the accident in a public place, operating his device in public space, observing events that were in plain view. [F]rom his position, [Rivera] maneuvered his drone into the demarcated crime scene area by causing it to hover over the accident scene at an altitude of 150 feet.

Officer [Edward] Yergeau and other uniformed members of the Hartford Police Department at the scene of the accident surrounded [him], demanded his identification card, and asked him questions about what he was doing. [Rivera] informed Officer Yergeau and the other police officers that he was a photographer and editor at a local television station, but that he was not acting as an employee of the television station at the time. [Rivera] also acknowledged to Officer Yergeau and the other police officers that he does, from time to time, forward the video feed from his drone to the television station for which he works.

Officer Yergeau and the other police officers demanded that he cease operating the drone over the accident site and leave the area. [I]mmediately after he was ordered to leave the accident site, Officer [Brian] Foley contacted [Rivera]s employer and complained to [Rivera]s supervisor that [Rivera] had interfered with the Departments investigation at the accident site and compromised the crime scenes integrity. Officer Foley either requested that discipline be imposed upon the [Rivera] by his employer, or suggested that the employer could maintain its goodwill with the employer [sic] by disciplining the [Rivera]. [A]s a direct and proximate result of Officer Foleys contact with [Rivera]s employer, [Rivera] was suspended from work for a period of at least one week.

Because Rivera was suing for damages, and because he couldnt show any city policy of blocking drone overflights, he could prevail only if he could overcome the police officers qualified immunity he had to show that the officers conduct violate[d] a clearly established constitutional right, and any reasonable officer would have realized this. The court concluded that no right to gather information through videorecording had been recognized under Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent. (Several decisions from other circuits have recognized such a right, but two others have held that no such right was clearly established at the time of those decisions, and in any event the Second Circuit, in which this particular case arose, hadnt spoken.)

But the court went further, concluding that, even if a right to videorecord was recognized, it did not clearly extended to hovering above even 150 feet above the site of a major motor vehicle accident and the responding officers within it, effectively trespassing onto an active crime scene (paragraph break added):

[I]n cases where the right to record police activity has been recognized by our sister circuits, it appears that the protected conduct has typically involved using a handheld device to photograph or videotape at a certain distance from, and without interfering with, the police activity at issue. See, e.g., Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78, 84 (1st Cir. 2011) ([T]he complaint indicates that Glik filmed the officers from a comfortable remove and neither spoke to nor molested them in any way. Such peaceful recording of an arrest in a public space that does not interfere with the police officers performance of their duties is not reasonably subject to limitation.); Am. Civ. Liberties Union of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583, 607 (7th Cir. 2012) (While an officer surely cannot issue a move on order to a person because he is recording, he police may order bystanders to disperse for reasons related to public safety and order and other legitimate law-enforcement needs. Nothing we have said here immunizes behavior that obstructs or interferes with effective law enforcement or the protection of public safety.).

By contrast, here [Rivera] directed a flying object into a police-restricted area, where it proceeded to hover over the site of a major motor vehicle accident and the responding officers within it, effectively trespassing onto an active crime scene. See, e.g., U.S. v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256, 266 (1946) (holding that invasions to airspace situated within the immediate reaches of land including airspace so close to the land that invasions of it affect the use and enjoyment of the surface of the land are in the same category as invasions to the land itself). Even if recording police activity were a clearly established right in the Second Circuit, [Rivera]s conduct is beyond the scope of that right as it has been articulated by other circuits.

This is probably the most First-Amendment-skeptical part of the courts analysis, and Im not sure its right. Practically, its not clear to me why videorecording a scene from 150 feet above is any more of an intrusion into a police investigation than videorecording it from 150 feet away horizontally or diagonally (if the drone had been off to the side but looking down at angle), at least unless a police helicopter was nearby or was likely to be nearby.

Originally posted here:

Volokh Conspiracy: No drone surveillance of crime scene (even from 150 feet above), police say