NACDL's Fourth Amendment Center offers direct assistance to defense lawyers handling cases involving new surveillance tools, technologies and tactics that infringe on the constitutional rights of people in America. The Center is available to help members of the defense bar in bringing new Fourth Amendment challenges.

 To request assistance or additional information, contact 4AC@nacdl.org.

In People v. Seymour, 21CR20001, defense challenges the constitutionality of a reverse keyword warrant served on Google for anyone who searched for a particular physical address over 15 days, and moves to suppress all resulting evidence. The Fourth Amendment Center’s Litigation Director, Michael Price, is co-counsel for the defense. 

 To identify suspects, law enforcement officers are turning increasingly to reverse search warrants, such as geofence warrants and keyword search warrants. These are searches used to find suspects and are not conducted to find evidence on a targeted individual. This trend presents novel challenges to the Fourth Amendment and privacy rights in the United States. 

Fuentes centers on the use of a geofence warrant, which searches all the location information of Google users with location history enabled for individuals who were near within a specified area during a period of time. The court granted the motion to suppress, ruling that the geofence constituted a general warrant and violated the Fourth Amendment. The court did not apply the good faith doctorine. 

Geofence warrants are a type of reverse warrant where the government seeks to know who was within a “geofence,” a defined physical area during a specific period of time. These are a type of “reverse warrant,” used to identify suspects when none are known without the data gathered by the warrant. The government utilizes geofence warrants to compel companies, such as Google, to produce information about devices interacting with their technology within a particular geographic region, which often includes many people who are wholly unconnected to the event being investigated. 

The motion requests the court to deny the defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained through the geofence warrant. They argue the geofence warrant did not violate the Fourth Amendment and should not be suppressed because investigators acted in good faith. The motion requests the court to deny the defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained through the geofence warrant.

This motion argues that the geofence warrant in Fuentes was constitutional and asserts that the warrant complied with the Fourth Amendment and that the evidence should not be suppressed because investigators acted in good faith and reasonably relied on the warrant. The motion requests the court to deny the defendant’s motion to suppress.

The defense argues that the geofence warrant in Fuentes was unconstitutional. They assert that it violated the Fourth Amendment and that the evidence should be suppressed due to intentional, reckless, and grossly negligent omissions and deceptions by law enforcement.

This decision granted the defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained through a geofence warrant, ruling that the warrant lacked probable cause and was overly broad, constituting a general warrant. The court found that the search violated the Fourth Amendment as it did not adhere to the required three-step process to protect user anonymity. The court also rejected the government’s argument for a good faith exception, noting that the affidavit contained false information and lacked necessary details. The court suppressed all evidence from the geofence warrant. 

The defense’s post-hearing motion argues that the geofence warrant in Fuentes was unconstitutional, lacking probable cause and particularity, and was based on misleading information. The motion requests suppression of all evidence obtained through the warrant, asserting that it violated the Fourth Amendment and was executed in bad faith.

Nearly all major police departments across the country have body-worn camera programs, which means that defense lawyers, investigators, and paralegals will often need to pore through hours upon hours of video footage as they defend their clients. But body-worn camera footage can be inconclusive at best and misleading at worst.

From police drones to body cameras, this webinar guided the criminal defense bar through the functionality, technological limitations, and legal challenges of litigating police technology in criminal cases.

This webinar walked through the recommendations and talk about how to negotiate stronger body camera policies in your jurisdiction, the technical aspects of body cameras, and strategies and tactics for defending clients in body camera jurisdictions. 

The U.S. government launders the original source of evidence in criminal cases in a practice known as “parallel construction.” In order to keep certain investigative activity hidden, agents simply arrange for an alternate evidentiary path. This practice allows the government to obscure secret surveillance technologies and programs or potentially illegal investigative methods from those accused in criminal cases, and the public at large. This webinar will educate members of the defense community about the practice of "parallel construction" and prepare them to fight it in the courtroom.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) searches the digital devices of people at border crossings and at ports of entry without a warrant and without suspicion. Criminal defense lawyers are uniquely exposed to abuse in this context, as their devices store privileged communications and work product. NACDL recently released a primer on the border searches of electronic devices. Drawing from the primer, this webinar will empower members of the defense community to be proactive in protecting their sensitive documents and communications when re-entering the country.