Shauna Kieffer was a previous member; she focused her presentation on the “4th Amendment and E-Surveillance.” She is a lawyer with vast experience in different fields of law. She has a beautiful family (husband and two kids).
She talked about digital security, privacy rights, hackers (not always the bad guys) and how government surveillance is growing and some examples on how that surveyance affects our life. One of the examples was a showing how the data collection of our government was hacked by Chinese hackers, and how they got access top fingerprint information.
One part of her presentation focused on why we need checks and balance: “Go FOIAU yourself … No, really”, explaining about the U.S. Department of State Freedom of Information and transitioning to talk about the 4th amendment of the Constitution that “protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government”.
After explaining the amendment, she cited State vs Souto, 578 N.W.2d 744 in which Souto challenges the sufficiency of the information contained in the warrant application to establish probable cause. That case took her presentation to What makes an exception to a warrant.
The exceptions to needing a warrant are:
- Plain view
- Consent
- Abandoned property.
- Exigent circumstances
- Good faith to bad warrant federally
After that she explained the Exclusionary Rule and its importance: that rule prevents the government from using most evidence gathered in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Used as example Arizona vs Gant (Rodney Gant was apprehended by Arizona State police on an outstanding warrant for driving with a suspended license, they searched the vehicle). That ruling determined searches are unconstitutional unless there are justified concerns for officer safety or evidence preservation.
Then she informed us about the kind of intrusions we have acquiesced to: facial recognition, cell phone searches (including location and data), geographic range data.
She closed the presentation with what can we do to limit the scope of the e-surveillance: legislate (the scope is too broad), require a tracking warrant (in MN a warrant is required by statute to obtain location (MINN STAT 626 A. 42 Subd 4 (requirement of disclosure of tracking warrant), Subd. 6 (provides statutory exclusion of evidence if you don’t get a warrant).
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