The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was enacted in 1986 to revise federal wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping provisions. It promotes the legitimate needs for law enforcement and most significantly, the privacy expectations of citizens. ECPA created the Stored Communications Act( SAC), which has created controversy in criminal cases where electronic communications have been present. Usually, in a case where electronic communications happened, one of the court's main task is to determine whether the crime violated the ECPA or the SCA. The case I will present next is a sample of the holding of a judge in a case where both of the acts became contradiction towards the final decision of the case. …show more content…
She set up the program to record the husband’s activity on his computer, intercepting his private chat rooms with another woman, instant messages and emails sent by the husband. Spector took screenshots of the activity that consequently was copied and stored in a file on the computer. In the decision of the case, the court determined that the Spector software intercepted and copied the electronic communications [at issue] as they were transmitted and therefore intercepted them in violation of the Act. Beverly Ann O’ Brien’s motion to use the evidence in court was denied in violation of the Wiretap Act. Issue: Whether the information was intercepted while in the process of communication under the Electronic Communications Act, or the communications were retrieved while in storage under the Stored Communications Act. Holding: Court holds that the unauthorized installation and usage of a spyware program to take screenshots of husband’s electronic communications violates the Florida’s Security Communications Act, enacted after the Federal Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C section 2501, et seq. An Intermediate Florida appellate court affirms the trial court decision to prohibit the wife from presenting the screenshots into evidence in her divorce proceeding with the
Application/Analysis: While using a previous case DePasquale v. State 757.1988, that court held in this case that the defendant was not entrapped when he robbed that undercover female decoy. The court held that the officers committed no misconduct, they also put five factors that show that Miller intended to steal from the decoy. The fact that Mill asked Officer Leavitt for money first and after Leavitt told him no; Miller took it upon himself to take the money away. This act was enough to show Miller intentionally committed larceny, the court held that Miller was not
The court for this case found that the search and seizure of the stereo violated the fourth and fourteenth Amendments. The Decision was 6 votes for Hicks and 3 votes against.
The Procunier case is whether the California Department of Corrections’ restriction on media-inmate interviews is constitutional or unconstitutional. The Supreme Court held that the California Department of Corrections ban was constitutional and did not violate the inmates’ rights of free speech. Furthermore, the regulation did not violate the media’s right to access information within a correctional Justice Douglas joined by Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall stated that the regulation violates the prisoners’ and the press’ First Amendment rights. However, Justice Stewart, Justice Burger, Justice Powell, Justice White, Justice Blackmun, and Justice Rehnquist stated in their dissent prohibiting face-to-face interviews was not unconstitutional and that restricting inmate visitation allowed inmates to communicate with people who could aid in their rehabilitation, but can be restricted when the security of the institution is at risk, referencing Chief Justice Warren in Zemel v. Rusk (Pell v. Procunier, n.d.). The court also stated that the media’s amendment rights were not violated.
The main subject in the Kyllo case deals with the advance in modern technology and how it relates to constitutional law. The overall question in this case is whether or not the use of thermal imaging technology should be used as a tool for searching the home of a person. The argument by the appellant, Mr. Kyllo, uses the unreasonable search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment as a defense against the use of thermal imaging systems without a warrant to search for illegal drug production inside his home. Kyllo v. U.S. is currently pending before the United States Supreme Court so the objective of this essay is to explain the procedural history of this case and to predict a final result and the implications of that prediction.
I believe this United States Supreme Court case is particularly important because it ultimately defends a person?s Constitutional right to privacy. As stated before, until this decision was made, the search and seizure laws were given little consideration. Although there is always an exception to the rule, for the most part, evidence that is obtained in a way that violates a person?s Constitutional right is inadmissible in Court. This decision has most definitely refined the laws of the admissibility of evidence and the procedures followed by those in law enforcement.
The U.S Constitution came up with exclusive amendments in order to promote rights for its citizens. One of them is the Fourth amendment. The Fourth Amendment highlights the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searches, and persons or things to be seized (Worral, 2012). In other words such amendment gave significance to two legal concepts the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures and the obligation to provide probable cause to issue a warrant. This leads to the introduction of the landmark Supreme Court case Mapp v. Ohio and the connection to a fact pattern (similar case). Both cases will be analyzed showing the importance of facts and arguments regarding the exclusionary rule and the poisonous doctrine.
Search and seizure in Canada has evolved into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as an important asset in the legal world. The case of R v. TSE sets an important example of how unreasonable search and seizure is in Canada. An important section that relates to this case is s. 8. The main concerns with this case are whether the police abuse their powers to search and seize Yat Fung Albert Tse, the fact that when the police did enter into the wiretap they did not have a warrant and also that it is a breach of privacy without concern.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 can be termed as a major overhaul of the communications law in the past sixty-two years. The main aim of this Act is to enable any communications firm to enter the market and compete against one another based on fair and just practices (“The Telecommunications Act 1996,” The Federal Communications Commission). This Act has the potential to radically change the lives of the people in a number of different ways. For instance it has affected the telephone services both local and long distance, cable programming and other video services, broadcast services and services provided to schools. The Federal Communications Commission has actively endorsed this Act and has worked towards the enforcement and implementation of the various clauses listed in the document. The Act was basically brought into existence in order to promote competition and reduce regulation so that lower prices and higher quality services for the Americans consumers may be secured.
" 2. The court said that it was difficult decide with the argument of executive privilege because there was no real claim to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets. 3. The court stated: "We conclude that when the ground for asserting privilege as to subpoenaed materials sought for use in criminal trial is based only on the generalized interest in confidentiality, it cannot prevail over the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of justice. The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.
R v. Keegstra: s. 2 (b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms versus s. 319 (2) of the Criminal Code
Privacy was once taken for granted in public education, but now through the 1974 law, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act it is pushed to the forefront of the minds of every educator in the United States (Cossler, 2010). This law has paved the way for many lawsuits regarding privacy of student’s records, which have left teachers scared, undereducated and unaware of certain regulations of the law. FERPA laws provide protections for students, but also allow access of all student records to the student’s custodial parents, which in some situations has cause problems and in some cases have specifically brought clarifications of the law. Has the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act provided the much needed privacy for students or created an overboard policies?
E-discovery is the discovery of any information stored in electronic files, which deals with trading information in any electronic format, requested for inclusion in a lawsuit. Information complied from e-discovery is later identified as potentially relevant by attorneys. Evidence is there after extracted and analyzed, and then later reviewed using a review system. E-discovery includes many different materials, which is subject but not limited to: email communication, company reports, voicemails, audio and video files, social media, databases, and supplementary file types.
... was not accepted by many of the Court Justices. One of the Concurring decisions was that because the information, which was acquired through the Stored Communications Act needed to be obtained with a warrant, the Stored Communications Act was Unconstitutional. This was argued because, for ISP’s to collect information about everyone that uses there services, they would have to present a warrant to everyone who they serve, and they didn 't yet have probable cause. The case ended in a decision that the government had infringed on Warshak’s 4th amendment rights, and that any obtaining of information through the Stored Communications Act (deemed legal) would have to be obtained with a warrant. This upheld Katz v. US to say that because Warshak used a private means of communication for his correspondence, a warrant must have been obtained to ask the ISP for the emails.
When the law enforcement searched Wurie’s phone, they did not have a warrant to have the illegal evidence from his cell phone, moreover, it required the court to reconsider Wurie’s sentence. Furthermore, the case of the United States v. Olmstead, Olmstead was suspected as a bootlegger, therefore, got the federal agents to install wiretaps in the basement of his building, convicting him of being a bootlegger with the illegal evidence that got from the wiretaps. Most people argued that the federal agents violated Olmstead’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment, but the court agreed that it did not violate those amendments and that the Fourth Amendment did not require a warrant for wiretapping, if listening devices were outside of the home. Also, in the case of Mapp v. Ohio, law officials convicted Mapp of possessing obscene materials after an illegal police search of her home for a fugitive. However, during they're illegal search they didn’t find evidence of being a suspect to a crime, they still arrested for obscene materials they found during the search. Since the law officials search was illegal, the Supreme Court agreed that the evidence of the obscene materials be concealed in court by providing a limited
Internet a bad name. There is also information on the Net that could be harmful