Federal Judges begin pushing back in favor of the 4th Amendment.
One of the things debated here often before and during the release of the information from Edward Snowden was the 4th Amendment and it's application. As we have seen, the Judges haven't been protecting the rights included within that amendment with anything approaching the vigor we would want them to. Now, things are changing.
The Washington Post has a long article here. I'd like to excerpt a couple relevant sections, and invite you to read the entire article, as it is very informative.
For these and other cases, Facciola has demanded more focused searches and insisted that authorities delete collected data that prove unrelated to a current investigation rather than keep them on file for unspecified future use. He also has taken the unusual step, for a magistrate judge, of issuing a series of formal, written opinions that detail his concerns, even about previously secret government investigations.
“For the sixth time,” Facciola wrote testily, using italics in a ruling this month, “this Court must be clear: if the government seizes data it knows is outside the scope of the warrant, it must either destroy the data or return it. It cannot simply keep it.”
It is infinitely more complex than we might think. The Federal Government has been using requests for information backed by judicial orders that may be relevent to an ongoing investigation to get around Search Warrant standards. The way that they have been handling Cell phone data is a great example. Not everyone who's data is seized and stored is suspected of a crime. Everyone who's data is seized could be relevant to an investigation sometime. For many here, myself included, this violates the Fourth Amendments requirements that require the evidence to be seized be described in detail. In other words, you believe that John Smith is a suspect in a bank robbery. You should be able to get evidence under a warrant relating to the bank robbery. You should not get any other information that does not relate to the bank robbery. If you do inadvertently get information that does not relate to the bank robbery, you aren't supposed to keep it on the chance it will be useful sometime later. You certainly are not supposed to get everyones information on the asinine argument that they may be involved in something, and we should know about it.
Search warrants require that the government show probable cause that a crime was committed and that the search will turn up evidence that helps prove the crime. Other magistrates had routinely allowed cell phone location data to be seized using court orders, which require the government to meet a less stringent standard of showing only that the information is “relevant and material” to an ongoing investigation.
I would like to offer my thanks, and congratulations to these Judges who are taking the duty of the magistrate seriously. They are there to uphold and defend the Constitution.