Nearly every case involves a cell phone or an online account. Laws on device and account searches are continuing to evolve, as courts reconsider old doctrines that do not fit with the realities of the digital age. Below, find sample motions on suppressing emails, passcodes, and other electronically stored information.

(Pre-Search Instructions and Post-Search Reasonableness)

A Report by NACDL’s Fourth Amendment Advocacy Committee Reporter, Steven R. Morrison [Released July 2014]

The Fourth Amendment has entered the digital age. New surveillance technologies and programs — from GPS tracking devices to automated license plate readers to bulk data collection — have upended traditional law enforcement practices and created new challenges for defense lawyers. This report offers an overview of this symposium and the substantive areas of concern related to new technological and legal changes that impact Fourth Amendment protections in criminal cases. [Released June 2016]

In response to a series of high-profile police killings of unarmed people of color, law enforcement agencies across the country began adopting body cameras as a solution to requests for more transparency and accountability. In order to study the impact of body cameras on the rights of the accused, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers established a Body Camera Task Force comprised of defense attorneys from across the country. [Released March 2017]

Federal laws protecting individual privacy rights in electronic communications have not been meaningfully updated in over 25 years, even though many of today’s technologies were not even conceived of when Congress considered the legislation and when the Supreme Court created the “Third Party Doctrine.” This white paper discusses the current status of the law and concludes with recommendations for reform. [Released February 2012]

2012

NACDL is writing to offer its qualified support for the Manager’s Substitute Amendment to the Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699). As amended, the Act updates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the law that sets standards for government access to private internet communications, to reflect internet users’ reasonable expectations of privacy with respect to emails, texts, notes, photos, and other sensitive information stored in “the cloud.”

NACDL frequently writes to members of Congress, the Department of Justice, and the president on fourth amendment issues. These letters have been collected and are available for download by clicking on the titles below.

A Surveillance Bill by Any Other Name: The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act  By Jumana Musa, Sr. Privacy and National Security Counsel at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers 

Courts have long made it clear that agents can search the bags of people entering the country. For the past decade or so, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has applied that logic to digital devices. NACDL members are uniquely exposed to abuse in this context: digita

We write to request further congressional oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (“FBI”) operations pursuant to the 2008 Attorney General’s Guidelines, which were implemented over congressional objections and threaten the constitutional rights of all Americans. In the wake of The Washington Post series exposing the secrecy and unaccountability of our nation’s intelligence establishment, the Senate Judiciary Committee has a responsibility to seek transparency into FBI operations and restore the Bureau’s accountability.

We write to urge you to ensure that any new cybersecurity information sharing bill considered in the Senate in 2013 at least maintains the privacy protections from Title VII, the information sharing title of S. 3414, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. We agree that the protections in Title VII of S. 3414 last year should be considered the privacy floor, and not the ceiling for any cybersecurity legislation. To that end, we would strongly oppose any effort to bring to the Senate floor the information sharing provisions of last year’s SECURE IT bill, or otherwise weaken privacy safeguards.

We represent a wide range of privacy and human rights advocates, technology companies, and trade associations that hold an equally wide range of positions on surveillance reform. Many of us have differing views on exactly what reforms must be included in any bill reauthorizing USA PATRIOT Act Section 215, which currently serves as the legal basis for the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata and is set to expire on June 1, 2015. Our broad, diverse, and bipartisan coalition believes that the status quo is untenable and that it is urgent that Congress move forward with reform.

S. AMANDA MARSHALL, OSB #95347 United States Attorney District of Oregon ETHAN D. KNIGHT, OSB #99298 PAMALA R. HOLSINGER, OSB #89263 Assistant United States Attorneys ethan.knight@usdoj.gov pamala.holsinger@usdoj.gov 1000 SW Third, Suite 600 Portland, OR 97204-2902 Telephone: (503) 727-1000 Facsimile: (503) 727-1117 JO

LAURA E. DUFFY 1 . . -. . . United States Attorney 2 WILLIAM P. COLE . .. ' . . . .... ... .~ . ~--". :.":'-~~ ..... -~---•.-~ ... . :'""'. -- ... . . . .... . 3 CAROLINE P. HAN Assistant United States Attorneys 4 Cal. State Bar No. 186772/250301 5 STEVEN P. WARD Trial Attorney 6 D.C. Bar. No. 395410 7 Federal Office