“Prosecutors are extracting data from more than 100 locked cell phones seized during arrests in downtown Washington, DC, on President Trump’s Inauguration Day, according to court papers prosecutors filed on Wednesday,” Zoe Tillman reports for BuzzFeed News.
“Prosecutors said they had search warrants to pull data from the phones, which were taken from individuals arrested on Inauguration Day, including some who were not indicted,” Tillman reports. “All of the phones were locked, according to the government, ‘which requires more time-sensitive efforts to try to obtain the data.’ But the filing appeared to indicate that they were successful in accessing information on the phones.”
“There are 214 people facing a felony rioting charge in connection with demonstrations on Jan. 20 that turned violent and, according to prosecutors, involved more than $100,000 in property damage,” Tillman reports. “A handful of defendants are also facing separate charges for destruction of property and assaulting police.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Some phones were easier to crack than others. 😉
Yeah fsck all those rioting idiots. Here’s hoping all the charges stick and they get to spend some quality time in jail.
Peaceful protest is one thing, but rioting because your candidate lost and you have the emotional maturity of a 5 yr old is bullshit and they deserve jail.
Yep. I am all for peaceful protest, you have a voice, use it. This kind of temper-tantrum-turned-rage nonsense, throw the book at ’em. I respect people’s right to disagree and take appropriate action based on that belief. I do not respect people that destroy property or hurt others because they can’t cope with their own thoughts and emotions.
Except that the police arrested over 200 people who happened to be on the same block as the people you are angry about, including journalists and attorneys. In other words, they arrested people with NO EVIDENCE that person had done anything wrong other than “something bad happened near you.” The police didn’t just question them, they detained them for many hours outside as a group, then arrested every single person they had trapped.
Then, even when a bunch of journalists had their charges dropped, the police kept their phones.
So, you should really go read more about what happened before you get all high and mighty. The likelihood is that most of those 204 people didn’t “riot” at all.
We’re talking about the 214 domestic terrorists who were rioting and will be facing felony charges. We are NOT talking about innocent bystanders that may of been initially arrested and later let go. I watched videos and it was madness and perhaps impossible at times for police to determine in real-time who were terrorists and who weren’t. (And I have no doubt some were trying to game the system and police when they got caught.)
I’ll put my trust in the courts and prosecutors to make the right call.
You should stop using the term “terrorist” so loosely, AustinX. You should know the difference. I cannot take your posts seriously when you call your political opposition terrorists.
You should also note that at least some of those people detained and arrested were not indicted. Are they still guilty? Are they still “terrorists”? You are way too willing and eager to assume guilt when the targets oppose your political views.
Yes these people that were rioting are literally the definition of terrorist.
ter·ror·ist
noun
1.
a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
That’s a pretty useless definition, since the “unlawful” part excuses any “legal” violence and intimidation, no matter how evil and cruel.
Basically, that definition says “whoever currently has the power to make laws can never be a terrorist, while anyone who resists physically always IS.”
Terrorists or “innocent bystanders”, they are all communists. Right, the journalists and attorneys “happened to be on the same block”. GTFOH These Bolsheviks FINALLY got a taste of their own medicine. Lefty progs are in for a rude awakening after all of the blood they’ve spilled.
Congratulations you just figured out how most societies and laws work. Those in power get to make the laws. Sort of been this way since tribes and cavemen I’d venture. You don’t get to pick and choose what laws you want to follow. And you sure as fuck don’t get to terrorize innocent people and businesses because you’re a self-centered, narcissistic brat that has nothing to contribute other than screaming and tantrums like a bunch of toddlers.
I, too, support peaceful protests. I just hope that this situation is handled fairly and reasonably. But it sounds like law enforcement is digging for dirt if it is accessing data on the phones of people who were not indicted.
AustinX, I sincerely hope that you expressed the same degree of outrage with respect to the violent behavior of Trump supporters during the campaign. You might consider that Trump employs aggressive and bullying tactics and encouraged aggressive behavior among his supporters during his campaign. Trump just doesn’t like the aggressiveness directed against him or his (apparently dwindling) group of supporters.
The irony of Trump and his fellow campaigners leading chants of “lock her up” is not lost on the citizens of this country who predicted just the sort of behavior that Trump has exhibited over the past two months. If Trump makes it through his second year, he may want to keep a letter of resignation handy. The ongoing Trump campaign entanglement with Russia might make Watergate look like a minor lapse in judgment in comparison.
I think what they were actually protesting was a President that has the emotional maturity of a 5 year old however I agree that it should remain peaceful.
So true. Of course the protesters should have been peaceful, and those that broke that stricture have made it bad for the rest. But to be honest, this was one of the more peaceful protests in history, with just 214 people arrested out of millions marching around the world to protest the most unpopular US president in history.
Trump is not the most unpopular US president; he is just the most hated by unhinged commie leftists.
I suppose it depends on whether you’re talking about domestic popularity or on a world wide scale.
It does not take an extremist to dislike Trump. But if that and a pacifier help you to sleep at night while the Trump Administration rapidly crumbles, then go ahead and wallow in your deluded fantasies while the rest of us pick up the pieces of your failed experiment in infantile leadership.
There is no way that Trump comes out of this looking good, and that might be the best that he can hope.
Just to clarify…that first comment was directed to Glenn.
Got it.
Actually, if you look at the approval rating numbers (at least here in America), the most ‘unpopular’ president was Obama toward the end of his second term. FWIW, though I’m no fan of them either, the Trump administration hasn’t done anything illegal so far, and actually pales in comparison to past presidents. People are making their personal feelings facts and then taking their personal feelings, well, *personally*. In the end all that accomplishes is to have given one’s power to someone one doesn’t want to have it, it’s foolishness, and the other side will happily actually take meaningful action while one is running around like a chicken with its head cut off fueled by blind rage.
Again, it’s nonsense, and it accomplishes nothing. Not for you, not for me. People don’t have the stones for even mild discomfort anymore, so stuff that would actually work (such as boycotts) are off the table because they include an element of conscious self-deprivation. I can’t take the protesters seriously. It really is just a temper tantrum appropos of nothing but their own inability to cope with life, which is not always on any of our *side*, and that’s just life. Things go wrong. People disagree. Deal with it like a grown up and a compassionate human being. It’s pathetic.
Actually James, you appear to be painting a bit too nice of a picture. In the past five decades, I do not recall seeing a new President with so many clouds of potential legal issues hanging over him. Granted, only the early snippets of evidence have been made public. But there appears to be a good bit of fire behind the smoke. I clearly recall the smell of fear and the sound of denial from the Nixon Administration, and I perceive a strong similarity in the current circumstances.
By the way, the recent ruling over the Trump building lease is utterly ridiculous. Of course, I would expect Trump to say good things about *that* judge.
The only reason the gov’t would require that information is to try and prove a conspiracy charge. But in the absence of any other information suggesting that these individuals were in cahoots, I fail to see how they could have probably cause to allow the search.
And the real question is – if you have them on felony rioting with property damage and all that, why do they even want to spend the time and effort to press a conspiracy/racketeering charge on top it? It seems like a tremendous waste of resources in the outside hope of pinning an extra year onto someone’s sentence.
I would expect a good attorney could quash the warrant or the evidence from the phones.
Of course, these folks were idiots for putting themselves in this position to begin with. Idiots acting no better than those they claim to be protesting against.
Pretty much once they were arrested, any probable cause arguments went out the window for any searches.
The problem is that a large number of those arrested were arrested without probable cause. There is no “probable cause” from being on the same street as where a crime took place and being indiscriminately rounded up, detained for hours, and then arrested with no particularized evidence against you.
If the arrest was illegal, then it cannot provide the basis for probable cause. There’s a good chance a decent attorney could get any evidence collected from a false arrest thrown out.
Then again, with the way the courts have made exceptions to a large percentage of our constitutional protections, a court might just do a bit of hand-waving and say “well, you found something, so we’ll pretend that you didn’t know the arrest was false, and call it an incidental mistake or something.”
My point was that once they were under arrest, the probable cause argument no longer applies. False arrest is another matter entirely.
I think it is reasonable to believe that Homeland Security is setting up a database including all the data from phones seized during arrests or cloned while crossing the border.
I am a lot more worried about that than about wiretaps pursuant to valid FISA warrants.
We’re not worried about valid FISA warrants; we’re worried about the illegally obtained FISA warrants.
Give us an example.
So, are we possibly talking about arrested people who were subsequently NOT indicted? Was the arrest legal? Would a warrant to search the phones of such people be legal? I think further detail may sort out what’s going on here.
The reason they want into a phone after an arrest is to examine it for evidence of collusion, but also to examine the text messages for evidence of conspirators they did not get to arrest at the time, especially if those text show coordination among certain rioters in various locations.
I agree JimBob. This is MANIACAL PARANOIA on the part of law enforcement, if there’s NO indictable evidence. This is at the level of totalitarian absurdity.
It’s amusing to watch people down-staring you, seeing as you’re on the side of US citizen’s constitutional rights. The *Ding*bat dummies WANT a US police state? Sheesh.
I also suspect the evidence would end upbeing meaningless from a legal standpoint. However: when a person is arrested in the United States, they lose a lot of their rights until they are proven not guilty, and if they are given a guilty verdict, they lose most of them. That’s the law, and the law is important. I dare any of them to live in a country where a person can’t call 911 or the fire department. They are whiny and utterly lacking in perspective. I suppose in some cases they could be forgiven for their attitudes due to their youth, it’s normal to be clueless and fragile when one has never been taught better, and we don’t teach kids anymore in the States. It does not excuse their behavior, and they should be made to suffer the consequences just like anyone else that has committed a crime, life is not a video game or a simulation. Hurting others sctually *hurts* them. If one ‘doesn’t care’ that is an entirely different problem and has nothing to do with whomever is in office.
You make some good points, James, but your level of cynicism is staggering. I thought that I was getting cynical, but you make me look like John Candy in comparison.
It will be interesting to see how many of these people are ultimately charged, prosecuted, and convicted. I suspect that the number will be low.
Am I reading this right?
…including some who were not indicted
If that’s the case, then WHY would any judge or the FISC provide a warrant to take and inspect their phones? That would be unconstitutional via the Fourth Amendment. It would be unreasonable search and seizure.
Derek,
While I agree it looks unreasonable, I’m not sure it is an unreasonable search and seizure for constitutional purposes. The phones themselves were properly seized when the person was lawfully arrested (just because the person was not indicted does not mean that the original arrest was illegal at the time).
As mentioned above, law enforcement then presented probable cause to a magistrate claiming that the phone data likely included evidence of conspiracy, intent, or some other relevant fact. That is a fairly new thing. Until a recent Supreme Court ruling, phones seized during an arrest were often searched without a warrant.
Again, the issue is whether there was apparent adequate cause for the search before the magistrate THEN, not weeks or months later when a grand jury declined to indict. The failure to indict might actually have been based on finding no incriminating evidence on the phone when it was searched.
Once the search has been conducted, I don’t know of any constitutional provision (aside from the inchoate right to privacy) that requires the government to erase the data after it determines that it is not incriminating. For one thing, it might provide evidence of a crime committed by someone else.
Some jurisdictions have statutes that require expunction of criminal files after a no-bill or acquittal, but I would bet that these cases are listed as still under investigation to get around that problem and the potential Freedom of Information/Open Records issues.
Thanks as ever for taking the time to explain details of the law!
Well, it does say that over 200 people were arrested and over 100 phones were being searched. So things may be OK. We should watch and see how things work out…
1. Create an alternate Apple ID
2. Keep only safe data there
3. Prior to any ‘events’, wipe data and connect to that account
4. If the gestapo asks for your Apple ID and PW, give them that one.