georgia – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Appeals Court Reminds Law Enforcement That ‘No-Fly’ Doesn’t Mean ‘No Drive’

from the curb-your-enthusiasm,-terror-warriors dept

The “no-fly” list has many problems. Pretty much any fed can “nominate” someone for the list. Pretty much everyone on the list has almost zero chance of getting off it other than by filing a lawsuit. And even though the government has been forced by court decisions to offer a venue for challenges, the federal government is still under no obligation to tell people why they’ve been placed on the list, much less promise to never put them back on it again.

When people have been removed (almost exclusively following lawsuits), they’re simply told they’ve been removed. The only way to find out if they’ve been reinstated is to buy a ticket to ride only to have it denied after they’ve already spent their money and arrived at the airport.

Then there’s the cross-pollination of federal law enforcement databases, which turns people on the “no fly” list into suspected terrorists, even if there’s nothing in the database that supports this implication or any cop’s corresponding inference.

As unjust as this all is, at least there are some limits. Well, maybe one. And maybe one that only applies to this specific incident. But, there’s at least one limit and it’s spelled out by this decision [PDF] handed down by the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court. And that limitation is this: you can’t stop someone from driving just because they’re not allowed to board a plane. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)

Here’s how this all went down in Georgia, leading to this federal lawsuit:

Georgia State Police officers stopped Amir Meshal, a professional truck driver, for a minor traffic infraction. During the stop, the officers received notice that Meshal was on the FBI’s No Fly List. Despite clear language on the notice instructing the officers not to detain Meshal based on his presence on the list, they handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a patrol car while they sought and waited for guidance from the FBI. While they waited, the officers searched the inside of Meshal’s truck and questioned him about his religion and his international travel. After determining that his truck was free of contraband and receiving the all-clear from the FBI, the officers released Meshal with a warning citation for the original infraction. He was detained for 91 minutes in total.

First, they ignored direct instructions telling the officers not to detain the driver. Then they kept him detained for 91 minutes which, if nothing else, definitely violates the Supreme Court’s Rodriguez decision — the one that says officers cannot prolong traffic stops without the reasonable suspicion to do so.

The State Police officers didn’t have any of that. All they had was a “no fly” hit that came coupled with instructions stating that his mere presence on this list did not justify further detention. And none of that justified the warrantless search of his truck.

And, according to the allegations in the lawsuit, the only reason Meshal was on the FBI’s “no fly” list was because he had refused to become an FBI snitch.

When [Officer] Janufka returned to the patrol car to tell Meshal that “narcotics- and explosives detecting canine teams were on their way,” Meshal asked “if he was being detained because he is on a watchlist.” Janufka responded, “Exactly. So, you know what’s going on?” Meshal then “explained that he had been detained in 2007 in Somalia by Kenyan authorities working with federal law enforcement agencies, and that **he ended up on the No Fly List after refusing the FBI’s requests to work as an informant.**” Janufka responded, “This is over my head. I’m getting instructions on what to do.”

Not exactly an improbable allegation! The FBI has been known to do this. A lot. Even if it feels it can’t justify a “no fly” list nomination, agents feel more than comfortable threatening people with deportation or further disruption of their travel plans. That a state officer would feel comfortable detaining someone in contravention of direct instructions otherwise makes it clear anyone the government merely wants to pretend is a terrorist is justification enough for any further violation of their rights.

At the district court level, all involved officers (Janufka, Oglesby, and Wright) were denied qualified immunity for this prolonged, suspicionless detention of Meshal, as well as for the completely unjustified search of his vehicle. They appealed. And the 11th Circuit says, too bad. Maybe don’t violate rights if you don’t like being sued.

The court first cites the Rodriguez decision in response to the officers’ arguments that the stop was not “unreasonably” prolonged. It also addresses their claim that detaining Meshal was necessary, even though the original stop was (allegedly) for him following another driver too closely.

Neither of these arguments persuades us. First, the officers’ call to the FBI was not an ordinary inquiry incident to the traffic stop for following another vehicle too closely and was not plausibly related to the mission of that stop. Second, the officers lacked an independent basis to extend the traffic stop because they cannot point to specific and articulable facts in the allegations before us that provide anything more than an inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or hunch that Meshal was involved in some kind of terrorist activity.

As for the claim that it was the FBI’s fault the detention took 90 minutes due to officers waiting for a return call from the agency (after ignoring the agency’s direct instructions not to detain the driver), the court is even less sympathetic. An extended stop can’t be justified just because officers chose to involve an outside agency.

The officers maintain that the length of the detention was dictated by the timing of the FBI’s response and therefore justified. But what if the FBI had taken two hours to respond? Or six hours? Or a whole day? It cannot be that any length of detention was permissible until the officers received an all-clear from the FBI. Our conclusion that the 91-minute traffic stop went beyond the permissible scope abs nt reasonable suspicion of illegal activity is bolstered by Meshal’s allegation that the NCIC notice directed the officers not to detain him based on the No Fly List and to call after the traffic stop was over.

Driving the point home, the Appeals Court says all of this is stuff officers should know — so clearly established they can’t plausibly claim they weren’t “on notice” that detaining someone on a no fly list (much less searching his truck) for driving isn’t acceptable under the US Constitution.

Here, based on the facts as alleged in the complaint, a reasonable police officer could not have believed that Meshal’s long-ago arrest for driving with a suspended license, his delivery trip to Miami, and his mere presence on the No Fly List were sufficient to detain him for more than an hour and a half. This is especially true given the alleged numerous, explicit warnings in the same NCIC notice that flagged Meshal’s no-fly status. As the district court aptly put it, “[t]he Complaint plausibly allege[d] that the officers merely equated Meshal’s presence on the list to ambiguous criminal activity, which they believed they were at liberty to investigate without regard for Meshal’s constitutionally protected rights.” That belief was not only wrong—it was unreasonable.

Moreover, binding precedent featuring materially similar facts clearly established that the officers violated Meshal’s Fourth Amendment rights by extending the stop, without reasonable suspicion of other criminal activity, beyond the time it took for them to conduct tasks incident to the stop.

The lawsuit will continue. And rights that were always present have been reaffirmed, something that’s going to help plenty of people who have been placed on the FBI’s “no fly” list (as this lawsuit alleges) for purely vindictive reasons. I would expect the state of Georgia to settle soon, rather than just wait around for more precedent curbing officer misconduct to be solidified.

Filed Under: 11th circuit, 11th circuit appeals court, 4th amendment, amir meshal, georgia, georgia dps, no fly list, pretextual stop, terrorist watchlist

Georgia’s Secretary Of State Slapped With Frivolous Lawsuits: The Case For A Federal Anti-SLAPP Law

from the protect-free-speech-for-real dept

Last week, the NY Times had an article about how Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, is being targeted in a SLAPP suit by a “podcaster” who claims Raffensperger defamed her in his book about the 2020 election. (For reasons unknown, the NY Times links to none of the legal filings in the case, but we’ll rectify all that below).

The case is a perfect example of why we desperately need a federal anti-SLAPP law that protects everyone from vexatious litigation designed to suppress speech.

Raffensperger has been a target for the MAGA crowd ever since he turned down Donald Trump’s January 2, 2021 request to “find 11,780 votes” for him to win in Georgia by noting that none of the conspiracy theory ideas Trump was pushing about the election in Georgia had proven true. Given that Raffensperger ally Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has something of a history with pro-GOP shenanigans in how they conduct elections, the fact that even he wouldn’t humor this kind of nonsense from Trump says something.

Later that year, Raffensperger published “Integrity Counts,” a book that attempts to explain his side of what happened during the 2020 election.

Eleven months later, Jacki Pick sued Raffensperger for defamation in Judge Reed O’Connor’s court in Texas. She claimed that the book, which does not mention her, defames her. From the complaint:

In the Book, Raffensperger refers to the video presented to the Committee as a “SLICED-AND-DICED VIDEO.” Raffensperger states that the State Farm Arena video—presented to the Committee by Ms. Pick alone—“had been deceptively sliced and edited so that it appeared to show the exact opposite of reality.” Book, p. 138…. That is, he called Ms. Pick a liar and accused her of actions constituting a crime under Georgia law

Raffensperger further claimed that Ms. Pick’s presentation “showed a slice of video that had removed the clear evidence that Fulton County election workers had protected the ballots and the process as required by law.” Raffensperger later again referred to the video as a “chopped-up video.” Book, p. 139 …

In later public statements, Raffensperger described the video shown by Ms. Pick as “doctored” and “false.”

In his motion to dismiss, Raffensperger rightly focused on the fact that Texas had no jurisdiction over him for such a case.

In sum, Defendant had no contacts with Texas. Even his distributor had no contacts with Texas in connection with his book. All Plaintiff has been able to establish through jurisdictional discovery is that independent third-party retailers had contacts with Texas when selling Defendant’s book, and those contacts cannot be imputed to Defendant.

And thus, Judge O’Connor tossed the case over this issue last year:

First, Defendant did not reference Texas in the Book, nor did he reference any Texas-based activities of Plaintiff. See Revell, 317 F.3d at 473. Instead, Defendant’s statements concerned issues exclusively related to Georgia and Plaintiff’s testimony at the Hearing in the Georgia legislature. Second, when making the allegedly defamatory comments, Defendant does not appear to rely on any Texas sources. Third, Defendant’s comments in the Book and in nationally public statements do not concern Texas. For these reasons, the Court concludes that it does not possess specific jurisdiction over Defendant.

But, that didn’t stop Pick who refiled the case in Georgia earlier this year.

In the new motion to dismiss he filed last week, Raffensperger points out that Pick is never even mentioned in the book.

Here, nowhere in the book is there any specific mention of plaintiff. In discussing the December 3 legislative hearing—in a section pointedly titled, GIULIANI’S SLICED-AND-DICED VIDEO—the book refers only to the presentation “of witnesses and a video” by “Rudy Giuliani and other lawyers for President Trump,” a category that plaintiff’s original complaint took pains to make clear did not include plaintiff….

GIULIANI’S SLICED-AND-DICED VIDEO does not single out any editor or presenter of the videotape other than, of course, Giuliani. And it is Giuliani and Giuliani alone whom the book accuses of using the selective portions of the videotape shown during the hearing to mislead the Georgia legislature: “Giuliani intentionally misled our senators.” Ex. 1 at 139. In its numerous discussions of Giuliani’s “suitcases full of fraudulent ballots” claim, the book never identifies any individual on the Trump team, paid or volunteer, lawyer or otherwise, other than Giuliani. Whenever Integrity Counts mentions the State Farm security videotape, it is never ambiguous about the individual upon whom it places responsibility and opprobrium for the misleading excerpts and their use: Giuliani.

And then he argues that nothing he said in the book was false:

Plaintiff’s first contention seems to be that Integrity Counts falsely implied that the State Farm videotape presented to the General Assembly had been physically altered prior to its presentation or, to have been presented in a nondeceptive manner, was required to have been played in full, all 20 plus hours of it. Am. Compl. ¶¶ 3-5, 86. This contention is entirely without merit. The book makes neither implication. Rather, it accurately states that by using some segments of the State Farm video to arouse suspicions while ignoring other segments that made clear those suspicions were baseless, “Rudy Giuliani and other lawyers for President Trump presented witnesses and a video that had been deceptively sliced and edited so that it appeared to show the exact opposite of reality.” Ex. 1 at 138. The context makes clear that the descriptors “sliced and diced,” “chopped up,” and the like were used to emphasize the point that key portions of the video disproving Giuliani’s assertion of fraudulent ballots had not been shown to the legislature or tweeted to the public. Those descriptors were figurative, not literal, and under wellestablished law, not actionable. Horsley, 292 F.3d at 701-02 & n.2; Bryant, 311 Ga. App. at 243.

Plaintiff’s second contention, that two “suitcases” references in the book falsely defamed her, is also meritless. Whether or not, as plaintiff claims, it was common for Fulton County election officials and others to colloquially refer to ballot containers as “suitcases,” it cannot be denied that Giuliani and others, including the president himself, were using the term to falsely assert that the boxes were not official and the ballots within them fraudulent. See, e.g., Ex. 1 at 168-69 (Trump: “[t]hey weren’t in an official voter box; they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks. Suitcases.”). The statements plaintiff challenges—an investigative reporter’s ‘not suitcases’ tweet and Gabriel Sterling’s ‘secret suitcase’ discussion—were countering these assertions and, as the critical omitted segment of the State Farm video makes clear, were plainly correct and accurate in doing so. Plaintiff was not defamed by the statements nor were they in any way false.

Finally, with respect to plaintiff’s overall contention, that Integrity Counts somehow singled her out, which it did not, and specifically accused her, which it did not, of having presented misleading evidence to the Georgia legislature, the fact is that she did present misleading evidence to the Georgia legislature. Her presentation distorted affidavits and played a videotape to raise suspicions about the “chain of custody” of “suitcases of ballots” that goes to “fraud or misrepresentation” that other portions of the videotape that she did not play showed to be baseless. See pages 4-7, supra. Plaintiff did not go so far as Giuliani in claiming that her presentation conclusively established the existence of criminal fraud, but it was her presentation and its critical omission that served to justify and propagate the claim.

As the NY Times article points out, Raffensperger has spent around $500,000 out of his own pocket defending the lawsuit:

Mr. Raffensperger, who self-published his book, is paying legal expenses out of his own pocket. He has recently launched a legal-defense fund to help defray the costs.

[….]

“I have incurred over $500,000 in legal fees to fight these frivolous claims,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a statement. “Not every election official is going to be able to withstand that type of pressure,” he said. “This should send alarms to every election official across the country.”

The NY Times piece also notes that Pick has offered to settle the case, but only if Raffensperger makes a statement that he doesn’t believe is true:

Ms. Pick’s lawyers let it be known that if Mr. Raffensperger wanted to settle the case, he would first have to say publicly that her presentation of the video was not deceptive. In other words, Mr. Raffensperger says, he would effectively have to tell his own new lie.

This all appears to be a classic SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). Raffensperger spoke out about what happened with the 2020 election in Georgia, which is obviously a topic of immense public interest. Pick’s lawsuits appear very much designed to suppress that speech and pressure Raffensperger to say something he does not believe is true.

Pick also has vast resources because she is married to a mega-millionaire GOP donor Doug Deason. The wealthy can file these lawsuits at no significant expense, but defending them is way more expensive in money, time, and overall stress. Note that Raffensperger has already spent half a million dollars, just covering an easily dismissed over jurisdiction case in Texas, and just getting to the motion to dismiss stage in the case in Georgia (basically the very first step). The cost can only go up, and potentially massively, from here.

This is exactly what anti-SLAPP laws were supposed to protect against. Wealthy litigants can file vexatious and resource-intensive litigation against people for their speech in an effort to get them to suppress their speech. Notably, both Texas and Georgia have pretty strong anti-SLAPP laws. Those laws allow defendants to quickly stop costly discovery and make a motion to get the case kicked out quickly and (importantly) make the SLAPPing plaintiff pay the legal fees of the defendant.

Tragically, both the 5th Circuit (covering Texas) and the 11th Circuit (covering Georgia) have decided that anti-SLAPP laws cannot be used in federal court (where both of Pick’s lawsuits have been filed). That means those laws are useless here.

This is why we absolutely need a federal anti-SLAPP law that can be applied in these kinds of cases. Such anti-SLAPP laws are a necessary component to make sure that the free speech rights we all supposedly have under the First Amendment are actually achievable in practice. They are desperately needed to protect freedom of expression around the country, but certainly in cases like this, involving election officials.

In the NY Times article, Raffensperger notes that these kinds of attacks are only likely to become more common against election officials, but they’re already all too common against all sorts of people. This is why a federal anti-SLAPP law (and good state anti-SLAPP laws in every state) is such a critical need. And yet… none of the recent attempts to pass one has gone anywhere.

Without such laws, lawsuits like this can drain both the time and the wallets of anyone, even public officials like Raffensperger.

Filed Under: 2020 election, anti-slapp, brad raffensperger, defamation, donald trump, federal anti-slapp law, georgia, jacki pick, slapp, slapp suits, texas

Documents Show Atlanta PD Engaged In Surveillance Of ‘Cop City’ Protesters

from the letting-us-know-they-are-who-we-think-they-are dept

One of the things that’s supposed to separate us from the animals is the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Supposedly, that’s also one of the traits that puts cops on one side of the Thin Blue Line and the rest of us on the other side.

But, when given the opportunity, it often seems cops will choose to do the wrong thing. Should cops be engaging in surveillance of people solely based on their First Amendment-protected activities? Of course not. They know it just as much as we know it. The difference here is that cops simply do not care.

Yet another set of protests targeting law enforcement has been followed by news law enforcement officers abused their power to place their perceived opponents under surveillance. The Brennan Center’s public records requests have resulted in a deluge of documents that show the Atlanta PD engaged in pervasive monitoring of protesters opposed to the creation of a new, privately-funded police training facility that quickly earned the nickname “Cop City.”

Over 2,300 pages of internal intelligence reports and emails demonstrate how broadly the Atlanta Police Department has monitored residents engaged in ordinary activities used by political groups of all stripes. Atlanta law enforcement’s social media surveillance targeted opponents of the construction of a police training facility that activists call “Cop City.”

The full set of documents has been made available to the public by the Brennan Center. What’s contained in them is as disappointing as it is completely expected. Under the guise of public safety, the PD engaged in active monitoring of pretty much any activist group that expressed anything other than support for the police department.

While a handful of protests against “Cop City” resulted in altercations with officers and property, a large majority of opposition activity has been peaceful. Much of what’s contained in these “intelligence reports” details social media postings and other online interactions involving groups that have engaged in nothing more than truly peaceful demonstrations, town hall-style events, and fundraisers.

While it is true that social media monitoring may help police allocate officers to maintain public safety, Atlanta police’s surveillance far exceeds any such need in many cases, instead serving to keep tabs on citizens the department views as political opponents. For instance, one monitored group hosted a “community conversation” about education, neighborhood safety, health, and the Stop Cop City movement. An intelligence report about the evening noted that the group had hosted prior canvassing efforts and other peaceful events. Another monitored event — a pizza night at a local business — was held by the group Women on the Rise and involved “a moment to reflect” on community safety. Past events organized by the group were similarly peaceful. Prior events by the host of a study group to discuss abortion politics — also the subject of an intelligence report — were logged as peaceful too.

Nothing in the reports detailed above could be remotely considered “intelligence.” And the interest of public safety definitely isn’t served when the PD expends resources monitoring groups that have never participated in events that resulted in property damage, altercations with officers, or arrests. Nor is it served when the same law enforcement officials leverage their wasted time and ignorance to demonize encryption.

Instead, this looks like “just because” efforts deployed by bored cops on homeland security duty that needed to show their bosses they were worth whatever they were being paid. And that’s the best case scenario: the “looking busy” excuse. The alternative explanation is that cops waste time and tax dollars monitoring peaceful protest groups just because they have the motive and opportunity to do so. It’s low-level surveillance that serves no greater purpose than finding any reason at all to harass group members or, worse, place them under arrest for things entirely unrelated to the mission goals of the domestic security program.

Worse, the Atlanta PD took this worthless “intelligence” and used it to make other agencies more stupid and less efficient.

These surveillance reports are likely to influence policing beyond Georgia. Atlanta police have circulated them widely to all sorts of local officials, Georgia counterterrorism agencies, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, and universities. One federal agency in this ecosystem, the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, has provided Georgia authorities with politicized information characterizing protesters as domestic violent extremists driven by “anti-law enforcement sentiment,” a theme Georgia cited in its racketeering charges. Together, the agencies form an echo chamber of questionable intelligence that portrays dissent on- and offline as terrorism.

And this is only the stuff the Atlanta PD agreed to release to the Brennan Center. There’s no reason to believe there’s no other surveillance in play as well — something that runs deeper than constant social media monitoring enabled by private contractors. But that will take more time, effort, and litigation to pry loose. This is just the surface-level stuff plenty of cops shops engage in, despite the fact that they know better than to be doing this sort of thing.

It’s all very petty and vindictive. It’s self-serving, which is the very antithesis of “public service.” It’s cops keeping an eye on people who don’t like cops (1) because they can, and (2) because no one inside any law enforcement agency will stop them. It’s a full embrace of the appearance of impropriety because, by and large, police agencies and the officials that lead them simply don’t care what the public thinks of them, especially the members of the public who already fear and/or distrust them.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, atlanta, atlanta pd, cop city, georgia, police surveillance, privacy, protests
Companies: atlanta police foundation

Georgia’s Voter Registration Cancellation Site Briefly Exposes Data, With Predictable Results

from the do-better-or-prepare-for-the-worst dept

Election security is still an issue that demands close attention. Unfortunately, the political rhetoric in this country has been controlled by Republicans who continue to insist the last election was “stolen,” despite a complete lack of evidence. This isn’t helping anything. And raiding the Capitol to overturn election results accomplished little else than allowing people to proclaim themselves “patriots” when not being actively prosecuted for federal law violations.

Georgia has been a political hot spot and an area of some concern in terms of election security. This dates back prior to Trump’s false “stolen election” claims, but not before Trump started converting Republican politicians into toadies willing to echo whatever dumb bullshit came out of his mouth.

So, on one hand, we have Governor Brian Kemp’s BS claim that Democrats were “hacking the voter registration system” — something he first declared in 2018 following Trump’s election two years earlier. On the other hand, we have Trump remora/former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani doing whatever he can to prevent his money from ending up in the pockets of the Georgia election workers he spent several months defaming during TV appearances on FOX News and other far-right news outlets.

While it might seem more diplomatic to say the truth lies between these two extremes, the fact is the truth lies much closer to the actual truth than the conspiracy theories pushed by people like Georgia governor Brian Kemp, disgraced former mayor Rudy Giuliani, and the odds-on favorite for Grover Cleveland-ing the nation, Donald Trump.

What’s happening now isn’t helping anything. Georgia’s voter registration system has some problems, like many others across the nation. But Georgia is making headlines because it left some key voter registration data briefly exposed, which has now led to people who think they’re more subversive than they actually are to start cancelling registrations of people they don’t like. Here’s Doug Clark with more details for ProPublica:

On Friday, four days after Georgia Democrats began warning that bad actors could abuse the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such attempts — including unsuccessful efforts to cancel the registrations of two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

[…]

Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for Georgia’s Secretary of State’s Office, said the state had been monitoring cancellation requests for abuse and that’s how it spotted the ones targeting Greene’s and Raffensperger’s registrations.

The Democrats issued the first warning. At first glance, it might appear Democrats were the first to exploit this exposed data. I’m not an idiot so I’m not going to claim this is a false flag operation meant to portray Democrats as cheaters willing to steal the vote. But there’s an equally likely chance this has nothing to with the Democrat party and everything to do with The Internet. It could have been a staffer at a Democratic rep’s office. Or it could have been someone who frequents 8chan. While this is obviously a bad thing, there’s no reason to believe this is the result of a coordinated effort by Democrat party operatives.

Rest assured, it will be portrayed as a conspiracy as soon as it’s politically expedient to do so. And that moment might come sooner than later, what with Trump spending part of his campaign visit to Atlanta, Georgia bad-mouthing the extremely popular (and extremely Republican) governor of the state.

“He’s a bad guy, he’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor,” Trump told supporters, eliciting boos toward Kemp from the crowd.

These comments — along with the state’s failure to protect information that would allow people to cancel other people’s voter registrations — are sure to resurface if Trump loses the 2024 election. It will be served up as evidence the election was rigged against him.

And that’s the biggest problem here. This was careless and stupid. But it wasn’t a deliberate attempt to undermine the integrity of the upcoming election. But because it introduces doubt — no matter how thin and easily rebuttable — it just adds fuel to the fire that has been carefully tended since the failed insurrection attempt that greeted the results of the last presidential election. Mistakes will be made because that’s an inescapable fact of life. But these errors matter more now because there’s a considerable percentage of people willing to believe any mistake is a conspiracy and are willing to commit violence to prove their point.

Filed Under: e-voting, elections, georgia, vulnerabilties

Georgia Prosecutors Stoke Fears Over Use Of Encrypted Messengers And Tor

from the prosecutorial-fud dept

In an indictment against Defend the Atlanta Forest activists in Georgia, state prosecutors are citing use of encrypted communications to fearmonger. Alleging the defendants—which include journalists and lawyers, in addition to activists—in the indictment were responsible for a number of crimes related to the Stop Cop City campaign, the state Attorney General’s prosecutors cast suspicion on the defendants’ use of Signal, Telegram, Tor, and other everyday data-protecting technologies.

“Indeed, communication among the Defend the Atlanta Forest members is often cloaked in secrecy using sophisticated technology aimed at preventing law enforcement from viewing their communication and preventing recovery of the information” the indictment reads. “Members often use the dark web via Tor, use end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal or Telegram.”

The secure messaging app Signal is used by tens of millions of people, and has hundreds of millions of global downloads. In 2021, users moved to the nonprofit-run private messenger en masse as concerns were raised about the data-hungry business models of big tech. In January of that year, former world’s richest man Elon Musk tweeted simply “Use Signal.” And world-famous NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden tweeted in 2016 what in information security circles would become a meme and truism: “Use Tor. Use Signal.”

Despite what the bombastic language would have readers believe, installing and using Signal and Tor is not an initiation rite into a dark cult of lawbreaking. The “sophisticated technology” being used here are apps that are free, popular, openly distributed, and widely accessible by anyone with an internet connection. Going further, the indictment ascribes the intentions of those using the apps as simply to obstruct law enforcement surveillance. Taking this assertion at face value, any judge or reporter reading the indictment is led to believe everyone using the app simply wants to evade the police. The fact that these apps make it harder for law enforcement to access communications is exactly because the encryption protocol protects messages from everyone not intended to receive them—including the users’ ISP, local network hackers, or the Signal nonprofit itself.

Elsewhere, the indictment hones in on the use of anti-surveillance techniques to further its tenuous attempts to malign the defendants: “Most ‘Forest Defenders’ are aware that they are preparing to break the law, and this is demonstrated by premeditation of attacks.” Among a laundry list of other techniques, the preparation is supposedly marked by “using technology avoidance devices such as Faraday bags and burner phones.” Stoking fears around the use of anti-surveillance technologies sets a dangerous precedent for all people who simply don’t want to be tracked wherever they go. In protest situations, carrying a prepaid disposable phone can be a powerful defense against being persecuted for participating in first-amendment protected activities. Vilifying such activities as the acts of wrongdoers would befit totalitarian societies, not ones in which speech is allegedly a universal right.

To be clear, prosecutors have apparently not sought to use court orders to compel either the defendants or the companies named to enter passwords or otherwise open devices or apps. But vilifying the defendants’ use of common sense encryption is a dangerous step in cases that the Dekalb County District Attorney has already dropped out of, citing “different prosecutorial philosophies.”

Using messengers which protect user communications, browsers which protect user anonymity, and employing anti-surveillance techniques when out and about are all useful strategies in a range of situations. Whether you’re looking into a sensitive medical condition, visiting a reproductive health clinic with the option of terminating a pregnancy, protecting trade secrets from a competitor, wish to avoid stalkers or abusive domestic partners, protecting attorney-client exchanges, or simply want to keep your communications, browsing, and location history private, these techniques can come in handy. It is their very effectiveness which has led to the widespread adoption of privacy-protective technologies and techniques. When state prosecutors spread fear around the use of these powerful techniques, this sets us down a dangerous path where citizens are more vulnerable and at risk.

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: encrypted messaging, encryption, fud, georgia, stop cop city
Companies: signal, telegram, tor

Self-Proclaimed 9/11 Hero Rudy Giuliani Now Owes Election Workers He Defamed $148 Million

from the the-fo-follows-the-fa dept

The man who decided he was the real glue holding New York City together following the 9/11 attacks is now nothing more than a man whose stupid, obsequious mouth has written checks he can’t cash. And all to stroke the ego of a lame duck president who thought what the nation really needed was a self-absorbed autocrat.

An empire built on baseless claims cannot stand. I believe that’s how the old adage goes. Rudolph Giuliani — who is now former-pretty-much-everything (NYC mayor, Trump lawyer, existent on this plane of reality) — has undone his own reputation and his own dwindling finances in the hopes that Daddy Trump will once again let him eat at the grown-up table.

Donald Trump will not restore him to his former level of (disposable) glory as White House counsel, even if he’s elected president in 2024. It’s clear Trump believes any of his die-hard supporters now facing millions in judgments are victims of their own ineptitude, rather than victims of Trump’s self-interest and avarice.

Giuliani defamed a couple of Georgia election workers for the sole purpose of furthering Trump’s “stolen election” hallucinations. He continued to do so even after it became clear Trump wasn’t going to save those who sacrificed themselves, their fortunes, and their reputations on the altar of Trump’s insurrectionist wet dreams.

At this point, Giuliani is nothing more than an embarrassment. Trump doesn’t care for people who fail, even if they fail on his behalf. Presumably, Trump views Giuliani — the man now on the hook for $148 million in damages — as a failure and a coward: labels Trump applies to anyone he considers to have “lost,” whether it’s die-hard supporters now suffering the legal repercussions of their actions or a prisoner-of-war who served their country dutifully until they were captured, tortured, and (ultimately) mocked(!!!) by the sitting president.

Getting drubbed to the point of bankruptcy is entirely Rudy Giuliani’s fault. He openly admitted in court filings that he had defamed the election workers. But he wanted the court to consider his alternative arguments, in hopes that these specious requests might make him just a little less liable in other defamation suits in which he was the defendant.

He already owes the election workers and their legal reps more than $120,000 in legal fees, largely because he openly admitted he had lost this lawsuit.

The only question left was for the jury: how much does Rudy owe for the defamation he already admitted to? That question was answered recently. A fuckload, according to this CNN report compiled by Devan Cole, Holmes Lybrand, and Katelyn Polantz.

A Washington, DC, jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay nearly $150 million to two Georgia election workers for the harm caused by defamatory statements he made about them following the 2020 election.

Ruby Freeman was awarded 16,171,000fordefamationand16,171,000 for defamation and 16,171,000fordefamationand20 million for emotional distress. Shaye Moss, Freeman’s daughter, was awarded 16,998,000fordefamationand16,998,000 for defamation and 16,998,000fordefamationand20 million for emotional distress. The jury also awarded $75 million in punitive damages to both plaintiffs.

That’s nearly $150 million out of Giuliani’s own pocket. Unfortunately for the defamed parties, there’s no way Giuliani actually has the assets to cover this judgment. As Business Insider reports, legal experts who have been following Giuliani’s multiple courtroom debacles are pretty sure this is a judgment that will take years to collect… if it can even be collected at all.

“He can’t pay this,” said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers. “And it won’t go away.”

The former New York City mayor has racked up a litany of financial and legal troubles since dedicating himself fully to Trump’s ill-fated effort to maintain the presidency following President Joe Biden’s win in November 2020.

Giuliani — who was once considered one of the top prosecutors in the country — could be on the hook for still millions more as he faces two suits brought by voting machine companies, as well as a sexual harassment suit for 10millionanda[10 million and a [10millionanda1.4 million suit from his former lawyers.

This is just the most prominent tip of Giuliani’s litigation iceberg. And there’s no doubt this judgment will be appealed by the former NYC mayor. He’s unlikely to win a reversal of his non-fortune, though. His legal antics in this case (along with his unprovoked admission of guilt) will likely make any appeal futile.

The problem is Giuliani. He’s proven to be too stupid to shut up. And he’s apparently so oblivious to reality he actually still seemed to believe Trump would save him from himself. But here’s the thing: when your operative assumption is that a rising sewer lifts all turds, at the end of the day you’re still a piece of shit.

There will always be new acolytes willing to swear obeisance. And most of those won’t be wearing the stains of courtroom losses and bankruptcy filings. Giuliani debased himself to serve an orange-haired megalomaniac. He could have stopped at any time. But he didn’t. And now whatever he earns for the rest of life will belong to the people whose lives he tried to ruin in hopes of pleasing the most self-interested man to ever hold the office of President.

Filed Under: defamation, georgia, ruby freeman, rudy giuliani, shaye moss

Facial Recognition Tech Again Fingers The Wrong Person For The Job

from the working-as-expected? dept

As was always going to be the case with tech that can more reliably identify white middle-aged males than anyone else, another minority has been nabbed because of a facial recognition fuck up.

The only good news pertains to the city of Detroit and its law enforcement agencies, which are finally not the perpetrators in string of AI-enabled rights violations.

In this lawsuit [PDF], recently filed by Atlanta resident Randal Reid, the cop shop with the bad math resides in Georgia. Named in his filing (which is discussed but never linked to in this report from Click Orlando) are Jefferson Parish (LA) deputy Andrew Bartholomew and his chief, Sheriff Joseph Lopinto.

Yes, you read that right. An Atlanta, Georgia resident is suing Louisiana law enforcement officials over a wrongful arrest predicated on faulty facial recognition search results.

We covered this case at the beginning of the year, prior to Reid’s (inevitable) lawsuit. Detectives were trying to locate a suspect in a robbery of luxury purses from a consignment shop in Metarie, Louisiana. The tech deployed by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office (JPSO) suggested Randal Reid was the most likely suspect. This recommendation — as baseless as it was — was “adopted” by the Baton Rouge PD, which decided this unvetted computer opinion was the same thing as probable cause and secured an arrest warrant.

Reid was ultimately arrested by the locals. Officers in DeKalb County, Georgia arrested Reid based on this faulty warrant and held him for nearly a week before the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office “rescinded” the arrest warrant.

(Correctly) Surmising litigation was on the way, Sheriff Lopinto and his office refused to comment on the arrest or the AI searches leading to it. The warrant affidavit submitted to Judge Eboni Rose likewise did not say anything about the tech used to (mis)identify Reid as a criminal suspect.

Lopinto and his underlings may have survived immediate scrutiny but they’re not going to be able to dodge this lawsuit… at least not immediately. Reid is joining several other black people suing government agencies over false positives that were treated as probable cause by officers too stupid or too lazy to wait until all the facts were in.

Quran’s lawsuit was filed Sept. 8 in federal court in Atlanta. It names Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto and detective Andrew Bartholomew as defendants.

Bartholomew, using surveillance video, relied solely on a match generated by facial recognition technology to seek an arrest warrant for Reid after a stolen credit card was used to buy two purses for more than $8,000 from a consignment store outside New Orleans in June 2022, the lawsuit said.

“Bartholomew did not conduct even a basic search into Mr. Reid, which would have revealed that Mr. Reid was in Georgia when the theft occurred,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit suggests the tech used by the Sheriff’s Office was none other than the ultra-infamous Clearview AI — the facial recognition tech company so morally bankrupt even other purveyors of this questionable tech are unwilling to associate themselves with it. That insinuation is drawn from purchase orders and invoices secured from the JPSO, which show the Sheriff’s Office first entered a contract with Clearview in 2019.

Even Clearview — as awful as it is — takes care to inform its law enforcement customers that search results should be considered a small part of an investigative whole, rather than probable cause capable of supporting a warrant.

Nonetheless, that’s what happened here. And it was aided by the investigator’s apparently deliberate decision to mislead the judge about the origin of this so-called lead. From the lawsuit:

Defendant BARTHOLOMEW did not conduct even a basic search into MR. REID, which would have revealed that MR. REID was in Georgia when the theft occurred and has never been to the state of Louisiana.

Defendant BARTHOLOMEW’S warrant affidavit failed to disclose the fact that he relied exclusively on facial recognition technology. Instead, Defendant BARTHOLOMEW’S affidavit was intentionally misleading; it stated that MR. REID was identified as the suspect in the surveillance video by a “credible source” for whom no information was provided.

With any luck, both the JPSO detective and the tech itself will go on trial. But, considering cops hate talking about tech they consider to be “secret” despite reams of digital paper having already been published discussing this tech in detail, it’s more likely a speedy settlement will be headed Mr. Reid’s way. And while that will help this plaintiff, it won’t do much for future victims of this tech and incapable hands it’s been placed in.

Filed Under: andrew bartholemew, atlanta, facial recognition, georgia, jefferson parish, joseph lopinto, jpso, louisiana, randal reid
Companies: clearview, clearview ai

from the do-it-right-the-first-time dept

The Supreme Court’s Riley decision has been the law of the land since 2014. If cops want to search seized cell phones, they need a warrant. Nearly a decade on, cops are still violating it. The inability to follow the rules has seen evidence in this criminal case (brought to us by FourthAmendment.com) tossed twice.

The first tossing of evidence occurred in 2022, following this chain of events. From the Georgia Appeals Court decision [PDF]:

So viewed, the record shows that on November 10, 2020, police executed a search warrant for Thurston’s residence. The warrant authorized the seizure of a number of items, including “digital devices such as smartphones,” but did not authorize a search of the contents of such devices. During the execution of the warrant, a cell phone was taken from Thurston’s person and was later given to a detective, who was asked to extract digital data from the phone after being told that police had seized it pursuant to a search warrant.

The detective explained during a motion to suppress hearing that he was not limited in any way in searching the cell phone contents because he believed a valid search warrant existed. He further stated that he would not have searched the phone if he had known that the initial warrant did not authorize the search of its contents. According to the detective, there were some discussions with the assistant district attorney and/or the case investigators regarding the evidence downloaded in 2020.

Nigel Thurston was charged with a variety of crimes, with the state asserting (nearly two years later) the phone contained “unidentified evidence of […] armed robbery.”

Thurston moved to suppress the evidence. The trial court granted this motion on May 10, 2022, pointing out the obvious: the search of Thurston’s phone was unconstitutional due to the lack of a search warrant.

Sensing things weren’t going its way, the government very belatedly tried to salvage evidence that was on the verge of disappearing.

[O]n April 26, 2022, while Thurston’s motion to suppress was pending, the State applied for and obtained a warrant authorizing the search of his cell phone, and the same detective again downloaded its contents. The State acknowledges in its appellate brief that the detective used the same protocol, procedures, and forensic extraction software when he extracted data from Thurston’s cell phone in 2020 and 2022. In fact, the detective testified during the suppression hearing that extractions done in 2020 and 2022 were basically the same. Even the prosecutor admitted to the trial court that the information extracted in 2022 “mirror[ed]” that extracted in 2020.

Well, that’s not how things work, the Appeals Court says. You can’t salvage a warrantless search by acquiring a new warrant two years later. That’s what the lower court said, too, resulting in the state’s attempt to have that ruling overturned.

Based on these findings, the court granted Thurston’s second motion to suppress, concluding that “the 2022 warrant was obtained solely as an attempt to overcome the Constitutional violation which occurred in 2020, of which the State became concerned after review[ing] Defendant’s first Motion to Suppress.”

Allowing the state to get away with this would make warrant requirements irrelevant. Without the deterrent of losing illegally obtained evidence, cops could just search first and obtain warrants later. That’s what happened here and the existence of a warrant two years after the fact does nothing to make the first search any less illegal. Nor does it make the second search any more legal.

The independent discovery doctrine argument fails. The court points out the state copy-pasted most of the new warrant affidavit from the old one that did not give it permission to search the contents of Thurston’s phone. The original warrant only permitted seizure of the device. Using the same facts to acquire a new warrant permitting a more intrusive search doesn’t impress this court any more than it impressed the trial court.

And the detective can’t rely on the good faith exception to excuse the first warrantless search because… the good faith exception simply doesn’t exist in Georgia.

We likewise reject the State’s suggestion that the good faith exception should apply because the detective believed he had authority to search the cell phone in 2020. “Georgia law precludes adoption of the . . . ‘good-faith exception’ to the exclusionary rule as part of the jurisprudence of Georgia.” Gary v. State, 262 Ga. 573, 574 (422 SE2d 426) (1992). Despite the State’s suggestion, this Court is not at liberty to overrule Supreme Court of Georgia precedent.

And away goes the evidence for a second time. The Appeals Court says the same thing the lower court did: you can’t undo a constitutional violation by trying to be a bit more constitutional two years after the violation. We’ll see if the government learns from this experience. If nothing else, it might want to put together some remedial constitutional law classes for its investigators and prosecutors.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, evidence, georgia, nigel thurston, riley, search, warrant

Court: Riley’s ‘Get A Warrant’ Cell Phone Search Requirement Means Get A *Good* Warrant

from the do-better dept

In 2015, the Supreme Court finally addressed reality: people were carrying around computers in their pockets capable of accessing, storing, and maintaining far more information than could be expected to be found in their physical houses.

The government sought to compare cell phones to pocket contents or whatever might be found in the trunk of a car during a roadside search. The Supreme Court shut this argument down, pointing to the ubiquity of cell phone use en route to erecting a warrant requirement for cell phone searches.

While there are exceptions, the rule holds true: if cops want to search a cell phone, they need a warrant. But, as the Supreme Court of Georgia points out, not just any warrant will do. The warrant requirement also says specifics are needed. The Fourth Amendment forbids “general warrants,” the sort of thing oft abused by our former landlords, the British government.

And that’s reiterated here, in a decision [PDF] brought to us by FourthAmendment.com. Seeking a warrant? Good. Ignoring the relevant facts and copy-pasting a bunch of boilerplate to obtain this warrant? Well, that’s bad.

Defendant Roceam Wilson was arrested following the killing of Bradly Jordan, a pest control worker. After a brief investigation, officers determined a “black male” driving a teal green “Ford Aerostar van” was the best suspect. After consulting some ALPR (automated license plate reader) data, the cops decided Wilson and his van fit the description. A traffic stop was conducted, Wilson was arrested, and his van was impounded. A warrant was obtained to search the van, which resulted in the seizure of two cell phones.

That’s where the problems begin. An investigator applied for a warrant to perform forensic searches of the recovered phones. The warrant application contained a mix of relevant facts and boilerplate. It also included the assertion that investigators sought to access pretty much everything on the phones under the theory that any and everything recovered would be “evidence” of the alleged crime.

The trial court, after a challenge by Wilson, examined the warrant applications and found that they did not have enough particularity to be valid and ruled the evidence obtained from the phones should be suppressed. The state appealed.

Too bad, says the Georgia Supreme Court. These warrants were “general” in the worst and historical sense of the word. Nothing limited the search and investigators’ speculation that searching everything would result in finding evidence linking Wilson to the crime is exactly the sort of the thing the Fourth Amendment prohibits. Of all things, the state decided the boilerplate copypasta would relocate the warrant to its new home in Constitutional Land. The court disagrees.

As the State acknowledges, the search warrant broadly authorizes the seizure of “any and all stored electronic information” on the phones, “including but not limited to” various kinds of electronic information. The State points to the preprinted form language following this sweeping authorization as “limiting” in nature. However, that language clearly states that “[t]he foregoing described property”—that is, “any and all stored electronic information” on the phones—“constitutes evidence connected with the crimes.” This language cannot plausibly be read, as the State suggests, to limit the otherwise limitless authorization to search for and seize any and all data that can be found on Wilson’s cell phones.

The court also denies the state’s “good faith” request. Good faith means relying on a facially-valid search warrant. This ain’t it. The suppression order is granted.

One of the concurrences (there are three of them, all dealing with separate legal issues) references the US Supreme Court’s Riley decision to reiterate that the warrant requirement means obtaining a valid warrant supported by particularity, rather than just any warrant authorizing whatever.

Riley’s “get a warrant” holding was more or less a mic drop, and the Court has yet to return for an encore. But in the meantime, people haven’t stopped using cell phones or committing crimes (would that it were so!). And cell-phone technology keeps advancing, adding both to the value of cell phones for law enforcement seeking to combat crime, and to the privacy consequences the Court worried about. The Court may say more someday about just how the Fourth Amendment applies to and limits warrants for cell-phone data, but until then, our courts must grapple with these questions, in light of Riley, ourselves.

Today’s decision is a start. The Court holds that a warrant to search and seize “any and all” data stored on a cell phone, not even limited to evidence of the crime at issue, with no specificity about how any of the data could be used, violates the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement.

There was no particularity here. The boilerplate (despite the checklist) basically allowed investigators to acquire “any and all” information found on the phone. The concurrence compares this to searches of physical places and explains why cell phone search warrants without limits or guardrails are an obvious Fourth Amendment violation.

Our rejection of that basis for demonstrating particularity is rooted in the unique nature of modern cell phones, including their “immense” capacity to store information of all kinds—analogous to cramming the entirety of one’s life into a small slab of plastic, metal, glass, and silicon. When we view cell phones through that lens, the closest analogy I can come up with is a warrant to search a house and seize “any and all atoms of matter stored within, including but not limited to matter in solid, liquid, and gaseous states.” I suppose an officer would know what to search for and seize based on that description, too. But both that hypothetical warrant and its digital equivalent here authorize a forbidden general search, and our decision today rightly concludes as much.

Then there’s the problem with assuming the cell phones would contain evidence of this particular crime. The concurrence says this is a step too far as well.

[i]t is not so easy to square that permissive view of probable cause for cell-phone search warrants with Riley. First return to the cell-phones-as-houses analogy: An officer might also reasonably say that in her experience, criminals often store evidence of their crimes—cash, weapons, drug paraphernalia, and more—where they live. Yet “[p]robable cause to believe that a man has committed a crime on the street does not necessarily give rise to probable cause to search his home.”

[…]

Sure, cell phones are not in fact houses, so the analysis might differ in some particulars. But after Riley, it is not clear why cell phones would not be treated in similar fashion. If not—if this generic “criminals use cell phones, too” logic is enough for probable cause to get a warrant to search a suspect’s cell phone—it is hard to imagine a case in which police cannot get that warrant.

That’s part of the problem, too. Cops assume these vast repositories of data and communications always host evidence of criminal activity, seemingly just because criminals are also known to use cell phones. That’s deliberately stunted thinking designed to allow cops to perform expansive searches of any electronics owned by or found on criminal suspects. This rejection of that line of thinking recalls one of the most intellectually honest appraisals of cop thinking delivered by a court, one written by Chief Justice Brian Quinn of Texas Court of Appeals:

A logical reasoning sequence based upon some “training and experience” — because drug traffickers have been seen breathing, then breathing is an indicia of drug trafficking. Because they normally have two hands, then having two hands is an indicia of drug smuggling. Silly — maybe, but one can wonder if that is the direction we are heading. Whether it be driving a clean vehicle, or looking at a peace officer, or looking away from a peace officer, or a young person driving a newer vehicle, or someone driving in a car with meal wrappers, or someone driving carefully, or driving on an interstate, most anything can be considered as indicia of drug trafficking to law enforcement personnel.

Maybe this is because drug smugglers just happen to be human beings and being such, they tend to engage in the same innocuous acts in which law abiding citizens engage. See Gonzalez-Galindo v. State, 306 S.W.3d at 896 (observing that “[c]riminals come in all makes and colors. Some have hair, some do not. Some are men, some are not. Some drive cars, some do not. Some wear suits, some do not. Some have baseball caps, some do not. Some want attention, some do not. Some have nice cars, some do not. Some eat spaghetti, some do not. And, sometimes, some even engage in innocent activity.”).

That’s the reality cops want. Fortunately, the Georgia Supreme Court isn’t interested in allowing baseless speculation and overly-broad warrants to determine the contours of phone searches. The Riley decision said “get a warrant.” The unspoken message — vocalized here by the court and four concurrences — is loud and clear in Georgia: get a good warrant.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, georgia, privacy, riley, roceam wilson, warrant

Louisiana Cops Use Facial Recognition Tech To Arrest The Wrong Person For String Of Robberies

from the fitting-the-description-when-you-don't-fit-the-description dept

This is always going to be a thing with facial recognition. Hundreds of algorithms have been tested. Pretty much every single one does worse “recognizing” minorities than it does recognizing the predominant deployers of facial recognition tech: white males.

In 2020, the Detroit PD managed to rack up consecutive false arrests by relying far too heavily on the conclusions (badly) drawn by its facial recognition tech. This PD will rack up more false arrests in the future, seeing as its tech is wrong nearly 100% of the time.

Cops in New Jersey did the same thing later that year, arresting a man who voluntarily showed up at the station after being surprised to learn there was a warrant out for his arrest. The victim spent 10 days in jail and then the rest of his personal savings clearing his name.

The next headline-making misfire by facial recognition tech takes us down south, where the go-getters at two Louisiana law enforcement agencies combined forces to fuck up.

[A] recent attempt by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office to nab a high-end purse thief via facial recognition ended badly for a Georgia man who was jailed for almost a week over a false match, his lawyer says.

A detective took the algorithm at face value to secure a warrant to arrest Randal Reid, 28, in the June theft of luxury purses from a Metairie consignment shop, attorney Tommy Calogero said.

A Baton Rouge Police Department detective then adopted JPSO’s identification of Reid to secure an arrest warrant alleging he was among three men involved in another luxury purse theft the same week at a shop on Jefferson Highway, court records show.

This “adoption” of a mismatch made its way into the hands of Georgia law enforcement. Officers in Dekalb County, Georgia pulled over Reid and surprised him with the news he was wanted for robberies committed in a state he’d never visited. He was booked into the county jail on November 25. He was finally released on December 1, after the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office “rescinded” the warrant.

Now, Reid’s lawyer does admit the facial match was pretty close, calling his client a “spitting facial image.” But it’s not just faces that need to match. The rest of the description should match as well. And that’s where things diverge. The suspect captured on store cameras was at least 40 pounds heavier. The suspect also did not have a mole on his face, like Reid does. Unless officers were inclined to believe Reid lost 40 pounds in five months while growing a mole on his face, Reid should have been released immediately.

But that didn’t happen. And it shows yet another problem with relying solely on facial recognition tech to obtain arrest warrants: the only thing this tech looks at is faces. There’s a lot more to a person than the set of physical features residing above the neck.

Then there’s the rest of the ridiculousness surrounding this screw up. Law enforcement officers don’t mind being wrong. That’s just another attack vector for warrantless searches and cash seizures. They just hate it when everybody else finds out that they’re wrong. That’s when they go into lockdown mode, preventing the press from accessing anything that might further expose their careless patterns and practices.

Sheriff Joe Lopinto’s office did not respond to several requests for information on Reid’s arrest and release, the agency’s use of facial recognition or any safeguards around it. That office also denied a formal request for the July 18 arrest warrant for Reid and copies of policies or purchases related to facial recognition, citing an ongoing investigation.

Baton Rouge police also did not respond to questions about its warrant for Reid’s arrest.

When cops score a win, they can’t stop talking about it. When things go badly, they refuse to engage with the same press they rely on to reprint press releases touting their latest triumph over evil. It’s always the same and it never gets any less annoying or stupid.

However, NOLA did manage to obtain something that’s probably going to be useful to Reid and his ongoing lawsuit.

The warrant, signed by 19th Judicial District Judge Eboni Rose, does not say how Lopinto’s office identified Reid.

That looks like a pretty serious omission. It’s going to be pretty difficult for officers to claim they acted in good faith when the warrant was obtained in bad faith. And it may get worse for the JPSO if future document releases show the agency plays fast and loose with facial recognition matches, considering nearly every tech provider warns law enforcement agencies matches should never be used as the sole basis for arrests.

Occasional failures by facial recognition tech shouldn’t just be brushed aside as the inevitable outcome of widespread use. These tools are touted as being better than fallible humans at identifying suspects. But cases like these show the tech is little better than the officers using it, who far too often decide most black men look alike so why not just arrest the next one officers come across. We need tools that make police better, more accurate, and less likely to default to their biases. So far, though, facial recognition tech is just playing into the preconceptions of officers, but allowing them to blame the machine, rather than their own impulses for blown calls.

Filed Under: arrests, baton rouge, baton rouge pd, dekalb county, facial recognition, georgia, jefferson parish, jefferson parish sheriff's office, joe lopinto, louisiana, randal reid, robberies