With protections in place, body cameras have the potential to better document encounters between police officers and citizens while mitigating competing concerns about their potential for misuse or abuse.

Brief of National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioner.

Argument: Both federal appellate courts and state courts of last resort have inconsistently decided whether the Fourth Amendment protects social guests from unreasonable searches when they visit a home but do not spend the night. In the decision below, the New York Court of Appeals widened this split by ruling that a social guest who [*5] visited for dinner, but did not stay the night, did not have standing to challenge the search of his host's home. See People v. Ibarguen, 37 N.Y.3d 1107, 1107-08 (2021). The inconsistent application of the Fourth Amendment [*6] to social guests also degrades the efficacy of the exclusionary rule in providing clear standards for police conduct and concomitant deterrence of police misconduct by making it difficult to institutionalize uniform practices and compliance through widely-used training materials.

NACDL adopts a report and recommendations to address flaws through reform to the mail cover program.

NACDL adopts a report and recommendations on law enforcement searches of digital evidence.

The instant Indictment and a companion Indictment accuse 25 people, mostly young, overwhelmingly people of color, and many of them heroin addicts, of a conspiracy conducted essentially by communication through cell phones.

Argument: I am CJA counsel appointed by the Court to represent my client, Defendant Eddie MartinezFigueroa, who has been charged in a multi-defendant Indictment alleging a conspiracy to possess and distribute heroin. I submit this Memorandum in support of the Defendant’s request for a Protective Order to compel the Government to provide discovery and particularization of those electronically recorded intercepts which allegedly involve him directly.

My client is 26 years old and by virtue of a prior drug conviction is facing a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The instant Indictment and a companion Indictment accuse 25 people, mostly young, overwhelmingly people of color, and many of them heroin addicts, of a conspiracy conducted essentially by communication through cell phones. Through a seven month investigation involving the DEA, the New York State Police, the United States Attorney’s Office, and other law enforcement agencies, the Government employed video and personal surveillance, GPS tracking, monitoring of pen registers, and four separate Title III eavesdropping warrants, targeting four different cell phones and capturing both oral and texting communications.

The Board of Directors adopted model legislation to protect individual privacy against unwanted governmental intrusion through the use of drones

Brief Of Amici Curiae Electronic Frontier Foundation, Brennan Center For Justice, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Freedomworks Foundation, National Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers, And Rutherford Institute In Support Of Plaintiffs-Appellants’ Petition For Rehearing En Banc.

Argument: Rehearing en banc is necessary because the panel’s opinion contradicts two controlling Fourth Amendment principles. First, surveillance technologies that collect detailed records about people’s movements, like Baltimore’s Aerial Investigative Research (AIR) program, infringe on individuals’ reasonable expectations of privacy. Second, the “special needs” exception to the warrant requirement does not apply where, as here, a police surveillance program serves only as a law enforcement investigatory tool. Rehearing is also warranted by the important technological and social aspects of this case. Baltimore’s AIR program comprehensively tracks the movements of a half-million people as they travel throughout the city, and it is integrated into the city’s vast surveillance camera and automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks. Other vendors are following AIR’s maker, Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS), into this new market for advanced police aerial surveillance technologies.  These police “eyes in the sky” chill free speech and assembly in public places, raising serious First Amendment concerns. This case also exemplifies the disparate burden of government surveillance borne by communities of color—a problem described as “the color of surveillance.” Police experiment with, and eventually deploy, intrusive technologies like the AIR program in cities with large communities of color. Before Baltimore, PSS operated surveillance flights above Compton, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Dayton, Ohio. The company also seeks to conduct surveillance of St. Louis, Missouri. Further, authorities have routinely deployed aerial surveillance technologies against individuals participating in racial justice movements, like those protesting against the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Michael Brown in Ferguson, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. The combination of these racial disparities and the novel surveillance technique at issue here thus justifies rehearing this case en banc. And the legal errors in the panel’s opinion require it.

Brief of Amici Curiae The American Civil Liberties Union, The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and The Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey.

Argument: The state violates the Fourth Amendment and article 1, paragraph 7 when it obtains access to an incarcerated person’s recorded telephone conversations without a warrant. Jackson had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the calls he made to his mother from jail. Jackson did not forfeit all privacy rights in his telephone conversations by exposing them to jail staff for security monitoring purposes. Jackson did not consent to the State accessing his calls for its use in his prosecution. Requiring prosecutors to secure warrants in order to access jail calls is the only adequate way to protect the constitutional and policy interests the calls implicate.

Brief of Amici Curiae The American Civil Liberties Union, The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and The Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey

Argument: The state violates the Fourth Amendment and article 1, paragraph 7 when it obtains access to an incarcerated person’s recorded telephone conversations without a warrant. Jackson had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the calls he made to his mother from jail. Jackson did not forfeit all privacy rights in his telephone conversations by exposing them to jail staff for security monitoring purposes. Jackson did not consent to the State accessing his calls for its use in his prosecution. Requiring prosecutors to secure warrants in order to access jail calls is the only adequate way to protect the constitutional and policy interests the calls implicate.

Brief of Amicus Curiae for the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Support of the Appellee.

Argument: The circuit court correctly concluded that the video recordings should have been suppressed because the State failed to follow minimization requirements. The Fourth Amendment prohibits the government from unreasonably intruding in citizens’ privacy. Here, the government recorded citizens over the course of several days in a day spa, where they had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The circuit court correctly found that the evidence should be suppressed here. Amici write to emphasize the unprecedented scope of the surveillance, as well as the importance of suppression here to protect the rights of both defendants and uncharged third parties. Traditionally, the remedy for an unconstitutional search would be suppression in a criminal trial. However, because some of the conduct surreptitiously recorded was perfectly legal, not everybody who was recorded has been charged with a crime. Furthermore, those third parties’ only recourse would be the possibility of a civil suit, which is costly. Indeed, suppression here is essentially the only way to deter the State from engaging in mass surveillance, knowing that many citizens would have little to no recourse. Any other result would encourage an “ends justify the means” approach that this Court has cautioned against.

Snapchat's Guide for Law Enforcement regarding the required legal processes for obtaining information for users' accounts.

Compelled cell phone password & seizure materials.

Motion to suppress memorandum on lack of necessity regarding wiretap evidence.

In The General Court of Justice Superior Court Division: State of North Carolina v. Farrar;

Memorandum of law in support of defendants motion to suppres evidence (wiretap)

Brief of Amici Curiae American Civil Liberties Union, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Brennan Center for Justice, Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and New America's Open Technology Institute in Support of Defendant-Appellant Seeking Affirmance.

Argument: Gilton's cell site location information (CSLI) obtained by the government reveals invasive and detailed information about his location and movements over time. CSLI reveals private, invasive, and increasingly precise information about individuals' locations and movements. Gilton's location information obtained by law enforcement reveals voluminous and private information about his location and movements. Obtaining 37 days' worth of cell phone location data is a "search" under the Fourth Amendment requiring a warrant based upon probable cause. Cell phone providers' ability to access customers' location data does not eliminate cell phone users' reasonable expectation of privacy in that data.