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Plaintiff is civilly committed to the BOP having been found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2003 for an attempted airplane hijacking. The court concludes the DNA Act applies to him. Commey v. United States, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 70425 (D. Mass. May 21, 2012):

No court has addressed the constitutionality of the DNA Act as applied to individuals civilly committed to BOP custody after being found not guilty by reason of insanity. In Weikert, the First Circuit applied the general Fourth Amendment totality of the circumstances analysis, balancing Weikert's expectation of privacy against the government's interest in taking his DNA. 504 F.3d at 11. Applying this analysis to Commey, civilly committed persons have a diminished expectation of privacy. Both the Supreme Court and First Circuit have compared the liberty interests of civilly committed persons to those of pretrial detainees. See Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 320 (1982); Davis v. Rennie, 264 F.3d 86, 102, 108 (1st Cir. 2001) (applying to civilly committed persons the legal standard for Fourth Amendment seizure claims brought by pretrial detainees). The Eighth Circuit has explicitly held that, when considering whether a particular search violates the Fourth Amendment, civilly committed persons have the same expectation of privacy as pretrial detainees. See Serna v. Goodno, 567 F.3d 944, 948-49 (8th Cir. 2009). In Mitchell, the Third Circuit balanced pretrial detainees' expectation of privacy against the government's interest in taking their DNA, and held that the DNA Act does not violate pretrial detainees' Fourth Amendment rights. 652 F.3d at 416.

Based on this caselaw, the court concludes that the government's important interests in monitoring and rehabilitating civilly committed persons, solving crimes, and exonerating innocent individuals outweigh Commey's privacy interests, given his status as a civilly committed person, "the relatively minimal inconvenience occasioned by a blood draw, and the coding of genetic information that, by statute, may be used only for purposes of identification." Weikert, 504 F.3d at 14.

Therefore, the DNA Act as applied to Commey does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Defendant’s arrest for counterfeiting, for which there was clearly probable cause, justified a search incident of his backpack. There was also concern for officer safety. United States v. Pittman-Wright, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 69347 (N.D. Cal. May 17, 2012).*

Consent search and false arrest claims fail on the merits for valid consent and an arrest warrant. Southerland v. Garcia, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 10020 (2d Cir. May 18, 2012).*

There was probable cause for issuance of this search warrant in a bank robbery case based on the video of the robbery, an anonymous caller, and surveillance of the defendant’s house. Defendant’s assertion that the color of the house was slightly off and other houses in the neighborhood could have been described as well wasn’t sufficient to overcome the warrant. The suspect vehicle was parked in the driveway. United States v. Allen, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68902 (W.D. Mo. April 24, 2012),* adopted 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 68901 (W.D. Mo. May 17, 2012).*

Paul Joseph Watson | Federal agency looking to develop new wanding-style device for searches.

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The American Dream | Should it be legal for the U.S. government to spend billions of dollars on propaganda designed to change public opinion in the United States?

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Infowars.com | The school system is becoming a training ground for teaching kids to be subservient to the state.

NYTimes Editorial: The Right to Record:

The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department took an important stand last week, declaring that citizens have a First Amendment right to videotape the actions of police officers in public places and that seizure or destruction of such recordings violates constitutional rights.

The Justice Department made the statement in a federal lawsuit brought against the Baltimore Police Department by Christopher Sharp, who used his cellphone to take video of the police arresting and beating a friend at Pimlico on the day of the 2010 Preakness. The officers took Mr. Sharp’s cellphone while he was recording and wiped the phone clean of all videos before returning it to him.

The Courts of Appeals for the First and Seventh Circuits have wisely found that the Constitution protects the right to videotape police officers while they perform official duties. The video taken by another witness of the beating at Pimlico shows that the right to record is crucial to holding police accountable for their actions.

Business Insider: I Spy An Occupy: Obama’s DHS Surveils Legit Protesters:

Remember the Occupy Movement? Since last November, when the NYPD closed the Zuccotti Park encampment in downtown Manhattan-–the Movement’s birthplace and symbolic nexus—-Occupy’s relevance has seriously dwindled, at least as measured by coverage in the mainstream media. We’re told that this erosion is due to Occupy’s own shortcomings—-an inevitable outcome of its disjointed message and decentralized leadership.

While that may be the media’s take, the U.S. Government seems to have a different view.

If recent documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) are any indication, the Occupy Movement continues to be monitored and curtailed in a nationwide, federally-orchestrated campaign, spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

. . .

The right to public assembly is a central component of the First Amendment. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect Americans from warrantless searches—with the definition of “search” expanded in 1967 to include electronic surveillance, following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Katz v. United States. Assuming the Occupy protesters refrain from violence—and the vast majority do, in accord with a stated tenet of the Occupy movement—the movement’s existence is constitutionally protected, or should be.

The DHS’s monitoring, documenting, and undermining of protesters may in fact violate the First Amendment. In a recent piece for Dissent Magazine, sociologist James B. Rule explains the fundamental importance of a movement like Occupy in the American political landscape.

Fierce GovernmentIT: Surveillance through GPS is not the same as using cellular tower data, say law enforcement officials by Molly Bernhart Walker:

The boundaries of surveillance are being called into question as the law enforcement community seeks continued warrantless access to electronically-generated location data while privacy advocates say a January 2012 Supreme Court case means all geolocation data is protected by the Fourth Amendment.

In the wake of the case (.pdf), United States v. Antoine Jones, two congressmen--Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)--have proposed a bill (H.R. 2168 [.pdf]) that would require law enforcement obtain a warrant before accessing any geolocation data. The Jones case ruled that the FBI could not attach a Global Positioning System device to a car without a warrant.

Infowars.com | Anarchism seems to be a key word in the elite’s latest, violent promotional effort.

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CNET | And you thought the TSA was bad.

Rob Natelson | The original legal force of the Constitution is based on the original understanding.

Kurt Nimmo | Most terrorism is inflicted on people by government and its preferred business associates.

Canadian Awareness Mag | 'Mounties have spent $3 million on cross-border policing pilot projects; day-to-day threat is organized crime, not terrorism. '