Frustrated by the children's resistance to a parental custody decision, Judge Eric Eighmy locked them in cells until they became more cooperative.
Car-tracking cameras, like cellphones, generate vast amounts of sensitive data.
State and federal courts have almost uniformly ruled that searches of ALPR databases do not implicate the Fourth Amendment.
Financially motivated traffic enforcement produced a huge surge in revenue for Brookside, Alabama, where "fines and forfeitures" accounted for half the city's income in 2020.
AI-powered license plate readers flagged an abnormal driving pattern. Then officers made up reasons to pull him over and interrogated him, and they faked a K-9 alert to justify a nonconsensual search.
"It is clearly established that an officer cannot pull someone over without reasonable suspicion and thereafter concoct a fabricated traffic violation," the appeals court says.
Being on a construction site "does not open the floodgates to warrantless government intrusion," a federal judge ruled in a lawsuit filed by a construction worker who has been detained three times by ICE.
Flock has been promoting a recent study of its cameras' impacts on car theft. But the paper didn't demonstrate a causal effect.
And yet governments deny reimbursement claims more often than approving them, according to the Institute for Justice.
The history of the Excessive Fines Clause shows why Alaska pilot Ken Jouppi should not lose his airplane simply because he helped a passenger defy a local alcohol ban.
Recent comments by Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis reflect a bipartisan backlash against warrantless surveillance.
Criticism from Trump allies and recent survey results show that resistance to widespread deployment of automated license plate readers spans the political spectrum.
Americans are starting to recognize the dangers of pervasive surveillance by automated license plate readers.
Charles and Elizabeth Copley have big plans for their 50-acre property, but the town insists they need a business license to let people to hike or walk their dogs.
The company’s attempts to protect Americans’ privacy “will do nothing to protect innocent people from warrantless mass surveillance,” says an Institute for Justice attorney.
From wrongful arrests to officers stalking exes, license plate cameras keep exposing police failures.
Michael Soyfer, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, calls it “just the tip of the iceberg.”
The Kansas Justice Institute argues that Wichita's "warrantless ALPR dragnet surveillance program" violates the state constitution's privacy protections.
Although Flock Safety’s auditing tools have helped catch the bad actors, more is needed to protect Americans’ privacy.
The justices said the "open fields" doctrine, a sweeping exception to constitutional privacy protections, does not apply in the Keystone State.
Ken Jouppi's Eighth Amendment challenge asks the Court to decide whether a fine must be proportional to the gravity of the crime.
Newly published dashcam footage shows a sheriff’s deputy driving recklessly to pull over an actress he’d met while working on the set of the TV show Bad Monkey.
A bill tightening Colorado's civil asset forfeiture laws passed the state legislature by wide bipartisan margins and was signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis.
A Homeland Security official's testimony that ICE agents couldn't rely on REAL IDs as proof of citizenship led a federal judge to reply, "Help me understand how that makes sense."
The documents reveal BusPatrol’s plan to equip tens of thousands of school buses with license plate readers and share the data with law enforcement.
Too many courts ignore the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines.
Leo Garcia Venegas and the Institute for Justice are suing to block immigration raids on private construction sites that target Latinos.
The city has created a network of nearly 500 cameras that routinely monitor innocent people as they go about their daily lives.
Two petitions ask the Supreme Court to uphold the remedy required by the Fifth Amendment.
Many states have deregulated hair braiding, but Louisiana lawmakers want to tighten regulations by demanding more coursework, including on the ancient origins of braiding.
A mayor and a police chief "mistook their authority to maintain order for a license to suppress criticism," says U.S. District Judge Stephanie Rose.
Brookside, Alabama, made national news in 2022 after investigations revealed it was bankrolling itself through predatory traffic enforcement.
Under this understanding of the Fourth Amendment, an attorney at the Institute for Justice says, “there is little left of the rights of Americans to be secure in their houses.”
A proposed rule change would allow routine gathering of biometric data without a warrant.
Despite their general ignorance of constitutional law, bears pose a much less grave threat to your civil liberties than humans do.
A year ago the Justice Department suspended the DEA's airport interdiction program because of significant legal risks. The DHS is still using the same tactics.
An extensive network of automatic license plate readers is being used to develop predictive intelligence to stop vehicles, violating Americans’ rights.
Humboldt County, California's sketchy code enforcement scheme piles ruinous fines on innocent people and sets them up to lose.
The settlement, which followed Sylvia Gonzalez's victory at the Supreme Court, also includes remedial First Amendment training for city officials.
A new FinCEN rule forced small money services businesses to collect personal data on nearly every customer transaction. Lawsuits claim this violates the Fourth Amendment.
By calling the Manchester Road Corridor “blighted,” the city can now use eminent domain to clear the way for a $436 million project.
“I got arrested twice for being a Latino working in construction,” says Leo Garcia Venegas, the lead plaintiff in a new lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice challenging warrantless ICE raids on construction sites.
A federal judge cleared the way for Jennifer Heath Box's lawsuit against the cops who misidentified her as a fugitive, despite a "mountain of evidence" that they had the wrong woman.
The ban's supporters, whose motivation is plainly protectionist, claim they are defending freedom by restricting it.
Alaska has been trying to seize Ken Jouppi's Cessna for 13 years over a misdemeanor crime.
A recent federal appeals court decision underlines the importance of that safeguard.
A new campaign pushes back against the widespread use of automatic license plate readers without warrants.
The technology enables routine surveillance that would have troubled the Fourth Amendment’s framers.
Celebrate your independence with a subscription to Reason magazine, your most trusted source of honest, insightful news and analysis.
