Year: 2012
Court Says It’s OK to Track Cell Phones Without a Warrant
Over at a public defender, Gideon is talking about a disturbing new ruling from the 6th Circuit: Law enforcement and cops have been using cell tower data to pinpoint the location of a cell phone (and by extension its user) for a few years now, but this was mostly done post-hoc, to prove that a particular individual… Read more
Scott Andringa Won’t Be a Judge After All
So here’s a bit of good news: In the race to succeed longtime Pinellas County Judge Henry Andringa, Cathy McKyton defeated Scott Andringa. Scott Andringa is Henry Andringa’s son. I don’t know anything about Cathy McKyton, except that Brian Tannebaum supported her, which means she probably isn’t a complete tool. On the other hand, I… Read more
Anybody Willing To Do a Little Testing?
I’ve been working on moving this blog over to the WordPress blogging engine. I’ll write some more about it, but basically I’ve written a one-off program that loads the blog from the Movable Type database and generates a file I can import into WordPress. It makes sure the links track, cleans up some bad HTML, and… Read more
A Death That Rings a Bell
So here’s a disturbing story about a death in police custody: The FBI said Thursday it will join the police investigation into the death of Chavis Carter, the 21-year-old man shot in the head while handcuffed in the back of a police car in Jonesboro, Ark. The investigation comes amid lingering questions over who pulled… Read more
When Cops Forget To Fight Crime
Sometimes the police seem to forget they’re suppost to be stopping crime. For example, if the police discover that someone has stolen your car, you’d expect them to try to catch the thief and return your car to you. That’s not what the DEA did when they discovered that someone was using Craig Patty’s truck… Read more