We have been involved in several cases to help defend and promote CalECPA privacy rights.
People v. Meza
In 2023 we filed an amicus letter in support of a petition for review to the California Supreme Court, asking the Court to correct serious constitutional and statutory defects in an overbroad reverse-location search warrant. Geofence warrants are a surveillance technique that law enforcement uses to comb through millions of people’s location history records in order to identify people near a geographic area during a period of time. In this case, the warrant likely swept in a large number of people going about their daily lives with no connection to the crime under investigation. Our brief argued that the Court of Appeal misinterpreted the CalECPA by reading core protections in the law out of existence. We also argued that the court wrongly concluded that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule under the Fourth Amendment applied, with reasoning that would allow law enforcement using novel surveillance technology to violate people’s rights with impunity.
In re Search Warrant for All Records Associated with Google Account Scottarcla@gmail.com
In 2019 the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sought and was granted a warrant giving them access to the entirety of a person’s Google Account. Accessing an entire Google account allows the government to comb through essentially every private, sensitive, intimate, or personal detail of a person’s life: every username, all account activity, every password, every text message, every email, every physical location (no matter the source), every calendar entry, every personal contact, every document, every piece of financial information, every photograph, every mobile app, every search, every call, and every purchase. In 2020 we filed an amicus brief in this case in support of petitioner's motion to quash a search warrant granted in violation of CalECPA. The court granted the motion and ordered the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to destroy all information wrongfully obtained with the warrant.
Klugman v. The Superior Court of Monterey County
In 2018 when the Sixth District Court of Appeal denied the defense’s writ seeking suppression in this case, we filed a letter brief in support of review by the California Supreme Court. The Court granted the petition and directed the court of appeal to issue an opinion addressing whether CalECPA suppression motions must be filed within 60 days of arraignment. We filed an amicus brief supporting CalECPA’s unequivocal suppression remedy, and another in 2019 arguing that all violations of CalECPA must result in suppression. Later in 2019 we filed second letter brief supporting petitioner’s request for review to the California Supreme Court and requesting that the court of appeal’s decision be de-published. The Supreme Court ordered the court of appeal opinion at issue de-published.