Digital Warrants, Location Privacy, and the New Boundaries of Police Surveillance

Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host. He identifies himself at the opening and returns after each commercial break to introduce the legal stories and direct the panel discussion.

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor. The host introduces him as the program’s search-and-seizure expert and associates him with Blue to Gold.

Speaker 3 – Sheriff Mark Crider, Panelist. The host identifies him as the sheriff of Walla Walla County, Washington, and as a former FBI special agent.

Speaker 4 – Prerecorded Advertisement Voice. This speaker delivers the Galls, Compliant Technologies, and GunLearn promotional segments.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

Welcome LEO Round Table at LEORoundTable.com. My name is Chip DeBlock and I'm your host, we're a group of law enforcement professionals that talk about today's news and issues, but we do it from a law enforcement perspective. And let me introduce the crew. Guys, if you're into my waiting for the video portion of our show, he's back. I know. We just had him two or three weeks ago. He's the search and seizure guy and man, look at what we've uncovered and the role of search and seizure. And we need attorney Anthony Bandiero to dumb it down for us and explain to us at grade school level so we can comprehend it and also retain it, which explains theatrics that you're getting ready to witness. I apologize in advance.

And so Anthony, thank you so much for being on the show. We also have a sheriff Mark Crider all the way from Walla County in Washington State, also a distinguished career with the FBI. So and he's going to have some interesting commentary on these topics. And I'm excited. I can't wait to tell you what we're going to be talking about. We don't have a lot of topics today's guys because it's going to this is going to be in depth stuff and you're going to learn. I guarantee you, you're going to learn a lot. I do want to mention our sponsors, you know, our title sponsor, Galls at Galls.com. Don't forget that discount code that gets you 15% off your next order, Galls.com. It's RADIO15. Also, CompliantTechnologies.com or satellite sponsor.

We have Galls.com, MyMedicare.live, TwoBells.com and a shout out to the Brian Burns with the Tampa Free Press. Thanks for caring their content. Also read D-Drink FormerLeo.com and Travis H with Law, officer.com. And also people looking how the carrier show we're on every podcast outlet known the man, especially Spotify, Apple, iTunes, two of the largest. We're also on Rumble and YouTube and Facebook and X, formerly Twitter and Truth Social. And we have a full gamut of social media coverage as well. If you really look in the watch the show at different outlets, the best advice I can give you, go to our website, leo roundtable.com and whether it's radio, TV, social media, podcast.

We've got it all listed there, link, states, times, station numbers for radio, all that good stuff. And we're up to 47 stations now. One of them is 100.1 FM. That's pretty incredible. So thanks to everybody for their support. Now, let's go ahead and talk about what we're going to be talking about. So we've got some main stories lined up here. And we've got three main stories, two update stories. And that's if we have time to get to everything, I suspect we will not. But the first three are their main stories. They're deep dives into some complicated stuff. Anthony Bandiero, he is a search and seizure expert. Guys, if you're watching the show, if you're active or maybe administrative, you know, you're an agency head command staff.

You need to watch this. You're guys need to watch this to stay out of the grease. And there'll be more about Anthony Bandiero and blue to gold that will help lower liability for both the agency and the officers. But this first one we're going to talk about, explore the Supreme Court rules that police blunders on knock and announce will not kill drug cases. And the one after that, Supreme Court rules that geofence warrants must comply with the Fourth Amendment. And then our third one that we've got judge rules that law enforcement agencies request for cell-site simulator. And I read it on those. Those are pretty cool. It's overly broad in obtaining data from uninvolved citizens.

And you always hate it when the facts get in the way of a good, you know, strategic idea from law enforcement and how this works the system. And then we've got two update stories. If we have time to get those, we got five Georgia cops. We're in trouble because they use Flock cameras for personal searches according to the GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or GBI. They're serious people. I know a couple of guy, a couple of people over there an undocumented immigrant was fatally shot after trying to run over an ICE agent where you may be surprised Houston, Texas. That's right. And there was a showdown. I think that the illegal guy, I think he lost.

So if you guys are ready, let's start off with the first, you know, main story and we'll go from there. Wow. Tampa Free Press at TampaFP.com. And they did three articles on this, by the way, Florida Supreme Court rules that police blunders are knock-and-announce that they will not kill drug cases. And so we'll, we'll cover this briefly. Anthony will do the deep dive and explain it to us. But the Florida Supreme Court, and of course, guys, look, it's, I know if you're outside Florida and you're listening to this, you're thinking, now that's Florida. It doesn't affect me. And Georgia or Louisiana or especially if you're like over like Washington state or in California. But there's a lot of things that migrate over.

And in once case laws established, Anthony can explain it better than me about the importance of following some of the stuff, especially depending on who you are. But the Florida Supreme Court, they ruled that evidence sees by police during a raid that it cannot be thrown out of court simply because the officers failed to give the residents enough time to answer the door after announcing that they have a search warrant. It was a 6–1 decision. So not even that close. It explicitly overturned a 16-year-old state legal precedent that previously required judges to suppress evidence that was obtained during knock-and-announce violations. So this is major.

The ruling stems from a Leon County drug investigation here in Florida targeted a suspect, a specific trafficking organization. So the Florida Department of law enforcement, the FDLE and the Tallahassee Police Department, they obtained a valid warrant for a local residence. And when they executed it though, officers knocked several times, announced their presence twice. But they only stated that they possessed a search warrant seconds before they forced away inside the home with a battering ram. So inside the home, they got cocaine, MDMA, $23,000 in cash, two firearms. There's a guy named Keith Alexander times. He's inside the house along with three other people.

He's arrested and charged with a trafficking in amphetamines, possession of cocaine, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. So he was a prohibited person. And the time and times are bad guys successfully moved to suppress the evidence at the trial court level. He argued that the quick forced entry violated Florida's knock-and-announce law. He said they didn't, they didn't make the announcement soon enough about the search form. The first district court of appeal, they affirmed the decision noting that was found by the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in a case called State v. Cable.

Anyhow, the appellate court asked the state's highest court though to weigh in on whether that role should still stand, which tells me that I'm kind of curious how they came to that conclusion that asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in on this. And I wish I was privy to the rationale to what was going on in their heads and the discussions on how they knew that there was a possibility. This might even get overturned. so that said, gentlemen, let's do or deep dive into this. Anthony, you want to start us off?

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor:

I do. And I have the answer to your question, my friend. I do know why the appellate court has the highest court. Yeah, I do because it was actually inconsistent with federal law. so just to get out of the way, this was absolutely the right decision by the Florida Supreme Court. This is the way it works. This they actually had it wrong by suppressing evidence because of a knock-and-announce violation. So let's just kind of do some foundational stuff. So the first thing, the reason why we have knock-and-announce is to basically protect a person’s property, give him the opportunity to peacefully let this search happen and also to prevent violence, right? So there's absolutely a great reason to have a knock-and-announce.

We want cops to knock an announce. We don't want them violating this rule. However, the problem under the Constitution is that with at least with the exclusionary rule is that you're not supposed to suppress evidence unless the violation is what they call the but-for cause of the finding of in other words. The knock-and-announce violation is not how they found the evidence. They were going to find the evidence and this is what the court said. They were going to find the evidence regardless because why they have a search warrant. So yeah, you do have a technical violation, but that violation is not the but-for cause of the finding evidence.

Like, so if I search your car chip, you know, illegally and I find evidence, of course, my illegal search is the but-for cause like but for my illegal search, I would have never found the evidence, right? Well, that's what was happening here, what the knock-and-announce violation. The other thing that the court said was that, okay, even so you have this, you have this but-for cause, but also you have an attenuation issue like attenuation is another doctrine. It's kind of complicated. Quite frankly, I wish they would use a more simple term like, you know, it's like disconnected. Like, okay, even if there were some kind of connections to this, the knock-and-announce somehow found the evidence.

It's still, you still have this warrants and like your officer still got judicial approval to do it. Okay. So that's kind of the role we have knock-and-announce reason, protect a person’s property and reduce the risk of violence, but we also have the exclusionary rule, which does not align with the violation. The reason why the appellate court asked the Supreme Court to fix this was because this, the U. S. Supreme Court already fixed it in Hudson is a, is a, is a 2006 case, whatever, but the U. S. Supreme Court said federally under the Fourth Amendment that evidence is not automatically suppressed because of knock-and-announce violations. But they also said that's a, I think it's a violation. Okay. Yeah.

Well, but it's more than procedural in the sense that it is a constitutional requirement and that's what gets people kind of like confused like, okay, well, if the constitution requires knock-and-announce, then how can you not suppress the evidence? Why just told you why? Right. Because it's not the but-for cause. Okay. But the U. S. Supreme Court also said, Hey, noted that other remedies remain available because the dissenters, which there were, uh, you know, a few that the dissenters were like, well, all you're doing is incentivizing the police to break the law. Right. If there is no consequence, right?

If I'm not going to lose my evidence for not announcing and not then why am I going to do it in the first place in the Supreme Court answer that. And it's called a few things. One, civil liability and institutional accountability, but number two is a Section 1983 civil-rights action. See the violation occurred. You're supposed to knock and announce with a reasonable amount of time, dependent circumstances, right? But if you, if you do not do that, your remedy is money, not suppression of evidence. And that's why that's what's, that's what's supposed to keep these cops in check. The final thing about this before we go on a break here is this. Number one, most states would already have this rule. Okay.

So this is not earth shattering to any, to most people except in places like Florida, which they actually had it wrong. Right. But the other thing, because they, they comply with Hudson, but the other thing that's also unique to Florida and California is only a state like this is that they have a constitutional provision that requires that they interpret their own state constitution in line with the Fourth Amendment. Well, I already told you the Supreme Court said in Hudson, evidence is not automatically suppressed. So the Supreme Court of Florida had to do this. They had no choice because it wasn't in line with the Fourth Amendment according to the U. S. Supreme Court.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

I think you did a pretty good job of explaining that. Wow. And that was, and that was involved too. I'm, you know, I guess that helps explain why Florida had a 6–1 decision on this and there was one dissenter. So I'm, I'm curious with the, yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

Well, we got 13 seconds guys. There is so much more to come. So stick with us guys. Commercial break. We'll be right back.

Speaker 4 – Prerecorded Advertisement Voice:

My family only cares about one thing that I come home safe. At goals, every order begins with a promise made with purpose. Stitched for support. backed with pride. We’re constructed by dedicated hands. Delivering the standard you have sworn to uphold. We serve more than the mission. We serve the person. Each piece is engineered to help get our first responders through the shift and back home safe. Welcome back. Leo round table at leo roundtable.com. The law enforcement talk show, my name is Chip DeBlock and I'm your host. We're joined by attorney Anthony Bandiero with Blue to Gold at Blue to Gold.com and also sheriff Mark Crider all the way from Walla County and Washington state.

We've been talking about the Florida Supreme Court ruling on police blunders. I'm knock-and-announce that they will not kill drug cases and attorney Anthony Bandiero who specializes in search and seizure along with his company Blue to Gold at Blue to Gold.com has been breaking it down for us. I think we're at the tail end of this any final words on this Anthony.

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor:

The last thing is just people should not freak out. If your rights are violated, seek civil remedies. Not everything is a suppression issue. All right. All right. Great. I know as we go through the stories, the sheriff has a former career with the FBI. He may be providing some federal assistance on some of the commentary on some of this stuff too as we go down the rabbit hole. So did you have something you want to add on this one, Sheriff?

Speaker 3 – Sheriff Mark Crider, Panelist:

I don't think you can improve on that lesson that you just got. And actually I'm going to log that as legal training for my continuing education this month.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

I love that. I love it. Now, Anthony, since the sheriff kind of did a segue there for you, can you tell us what because we're getting ready. We're doing the deep dive and all this stuff. But this is valuable stuff. I mean, for active cops or for agency heads that sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. But I will tell you the people that are watching the show, we just had Anthony on the show explaining stuff like this about three weeks ago. And I mean, we covered what four or five articles that were, in my opinion, very critical things that it just changed. And now it's only been a few weeks and we're doing it again. And we've got three big articles and one small one.

Can you tell people what you do and how they can get a hold of you if they want more information?

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor:

Yeah, no, briefly. What I do is what I'm doing here. I teach cops how to make good case law. I teach them what the rules are. I teach the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, you know, and then we can go into the Fifth Amendment and I teach prosecutors the Sixth Amendment, and so forth. But the point is, is I go around the country. I've taught over 100,000 police officers personally, just me, Anthony, not just my company. I've taught over 6,000 prosecutors and defense attorneys about what the law is. And we are, you know, we are the largest legal trainers for cops in the nation.

And I'm not sure that's hard to do because there's not a lot of people that play in our space because they like the most in focus on tactical or hands-on training, SWAT teams. They don't like to play. A lot of people don't like to play in the legal training stuff because it's not as exciting. But we make it kind of fun. So BlueToGold.com. We have a lot of free training, by the way. We do free training every week. Yeah. Webinars and yeah, I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

All right. Well, excellent. Well, thank you. Moving along, guys, we've got our next one here, our second of three main topics. So this is from the TheLibertyDaily.com Supreme Court rules that geofence warrants must comply with the Fourth Amendment. Now, it's the Liberty Daily, but the Epoch Times or The Epoch Times however you want to pronounce it. His word originally came from the U. S. Supreme Court ruled on June the 29th that law enforcement officials have to abide by the Fourth Amendment when they use cell phone location data to investigate criminal activity. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

And they have a suspected bank robber said police violated its rights by accessing its location data to place him at the scene of the crime, which makes me laugh. But an individual, here's this is a quote from Justice Elena Kagan saying that an individual has reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone's location and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information, even though for only a limited amount of time and from a third-party tech company. And that's what she wrote in a 6-3 ruling. But the suspect in the case, according to this article and according to the judge, is not quite off the hook just yet.

She says that we leave to the Court of Appeals, or the lower appellate court, the further question whether given the warrant issued the search here was reasonable, meaning that each of its steps was properly described with particularity and found to be supported by probable cause. Now, Justice Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Amy Coney Barrett, they were the dissenters. And Alito and his dissent, he wrote that the suspects' chances of having the evidence suppressed are virtually zero and the court should have never taken this case at all. So he wasn't happy. And then the history of this is that after a 2019 bank robbery in Midlothian, Virginia, the law enforcement officer served at Google with a warrant for geofence data.

That's where this thing started. The police wanted anonymous cell phone data within a 300-meter radius of the crime to pinpoint the possible suspect. And then when they got the data, they gradually narrowed in their search on three individuals and finally arrested Okello Chatrie, charged him for the robbery. So after the district court upheld the location data as evidence, our bad guy, Chatrie, he entered a conditional guilty plea, and then he appealed it. So the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that had upheld the warrant, but the judges were divided on fundamental legal questions, such as whether examining the geofence data qualified as a search under the fourth.

And the majority of Monday's ruling said that it does qualify because our bad guy had an expectation of privacy regarding location data. But Justice Neil Gorsuch agreed in principle, but not totally. He said, hey, count me. I'm persuaded on this one. Why is tracking the bad guy's movements digitally over an hour or two in data's reasonable expectation of privacy? Because if we had a cop telling them for the same amount of time, it would not. And his concurrence questioned the location data should be considered as the bad guy's personal property. And the lower court was also split on whether the good-faith exception applied to the use of the location data. And so that's kind of where we're at.

So I just wanted to kind of plant the seeds and all this stuff. Anthony, why don't you step in here and clean this up for us?

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor:

All right. So let's work backwards real quick. Alito is not happy about taking the case, mainly because no matter what Chatrie is going to be almost 99%. He's not going to get his case overturned because we can all agree. I think we all can agree, even his defense attorney, even though not necessarily, but that at the time of this search, it was not even, you know, the law was not clear either way. And regardless, okay, the law is not clear the way. So he gives, he gives that, but regardless, the cops got a search warrant. So even if the search warrant is a little defective, which we're going to talk about, you give, what's that saying? You know, you give it to the, you know, like an ambiguous issue.

Like you give it to the cops here because they got to work. All right. So he's going to stay in jail. So let's now let's work from the beginning. This case is actually really important because even people like me was not sure that this was even a search. Oh, we're going 14 seconds. I see. So I'll pick it up. Yep.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

All right. Perfect timing will be right back guys. Commercial break stick with it. You don't want to miss this.

Speaker 4 – Prerecorded Advertisement Voice:

All right, guys, it's time to talk about Compliant Technologies at Compliant Technologies.com. And they are committed to providing non-lethal solutions to help officers gain the upper hand safely and rapidly in a humane, low-impact manner, utilizing what they're called their CD3, which stands for conductive distraction and de-escalation device technology. Now their flagship product, we all know by now is called the G. L. O. V. E.. It's not only helped officers tens of thousands of times, but they've had over 250,000 deployments. And guess what? No injuries, no deaths. Amazing statistic. They've actually achieved nonlethal status in an arena that predominantly can only offer less lethal results.

And when it comes to weapons retention, transitioning to a sidearm or a conducted-energy weapon, the glove of Compliant Technologies.com, they virtually eliminated weapon confusion. So stay ahead of the game. We're gonna Compliant Technologies and the revolutionary CD3, the hundreds of agencies have already tuned to nationwide and friends take it from me when it comes to safety. This is one of the most common sense hands-on solutions has ever come along with the Compliant Technologies.com today. Tell the chips at you Compliant Technologies.com.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:
Welcome back. LEO Round Table at LEORoundTable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock and I'm your host. We're joined by Sheriff Mark Crider all the way Walla County and Washington State and Anthony Bandiero attorney with Blue to Gold at BluetheGold.com. And we have been talking about the stuff in Anthony's wheelhouse, search and seizure. And the Supreme Court rules that geofence warrants must comply with the Fourth Amendment. Anthony, the floor is still yours.

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor:

All right, look, let's kind of start back to the, what is a search in the Fourth Amendment? Well, there are two types of searches under the Fourth Amendment. There's a reasonable expectation of privacy and there's a trespass. Now, both arguments were made at the U. S. Supreme Court. The attorney for Chatrie, he said, look, yes, tracking even one location, just one location over, one second, just one location violates a person's or implicates a person's reasonable expectation of privacy, whether it violates or not, depends on whether you have a warrant or an exception. But the other thing he made, and I got to tell you, I was fascinated and the Supreme Court didn't really hang their head on it because they didn't need to.

They already had the expectation-of-privacy issue. But they said that when you, your cell phone, right, when your cell phone gives your location data to the tower, into the cell phone company, that is actually your data. And you're letting them borrow it because you need it to actually make the phone function, right? So what he's saying, and I think it's a very good argument, he's saying this is not third-party data, this is not like you giving, like banking, like you're, giving information to a third party and let them do whatever they want with it. You're only giving your location to a cell phone company so you can actually use their device, it's your data.

Now they use it for marketing and so forth, but you can't, in other words, because it's your data, the feds or police can't just tell the company to hand it over without implicating the Fourth Amendment. I just want to drop that in there because I thought it was a very interesting argument. I think it's a viable argument. But ultimately, the Supreme Court said that this implicates a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy. In order to implicate privacy, you have to have two things. Number one, did the suspect here, Chatrie, expect privacy? Did he, did he reasonably expect that his location information would be not given to the government without, you know, without a record exception or warrant?

And number two, is this something society would recognize as reasonable? The problem that Chatrie really resolved is that the Supreme Court has never said previously that one location information, piece of location, it was a search on the Fourth Amendment. The closest thing we got was Carpenter. A lot of people actually know Carpenter. It's actually a pretty popular case, but in Carpenter, the FBI grabbed the FBI, by the way, is always behind these major cases. So just, you know, they're not perfect. Okay, they look good, but they're not always perfect. But the FBI took basically 10 days of tracking information, cell-site location information, about Carpenter.

And the Supreme Court said that was a search, but they made the opinion seem like it's only a search, why? Because of all these movements. You're basically painting a picture of this guy's life. Well, that's what, that's what, so in Chatrie, the prosecutor's like, look, this is not a Carpenter issue. We didn't track this guy for 10 days. We tracked him for two hours. But the U. S. Supreme Court, which is huge, said it's whether it's one tracking data or two weeks or two years, one search, one tracking piece of information as a search on the Fourth Amendment. And now you need crew. That's what we teach here at Blue to Gold.

If you're going to implicate the Fourth Amendment, a search or seizure, you have to have consent, express or implied consent, you have to have a recognized exception like exigent circumstances, like a fleeing murder suspect or a kidnapping victim, or number three, you have to have a warrant. Well, the Chatrie's attorney says the warrant is defective. But that's what's really going on here is that track, like this information, you know, this tracking information is not third-party data.

I can get into that, that there's a long line of cases that if you voluntarily give your information to another party, like a bank, you know, a car dealership, a Walmart, if you voluntarily give them information, they can use it for whatever they want, including they can give it to the government or the government can subpoena it without probable cause. But if it's protected by the Fourth Amendment, you cannot do that without a warrant. So they're saying tracking your location is not third-party data. It is your data, essentially. And grabbing it without a valid warrant is unlawful. There is one more thing, Chip, if I can kind of, because there's actually a missing piece of this too.

Well, I shouldn't really, the other piece of this was that they did argue that the way that they, that Chatrie, that the way that the, that, well, I feel, I feel it was Carpenter, but here it was not the FBI. But in Chatrie, they said that the warrant itself was what they call a general warrant, which is something from colonial days, essentially saying that the general, the warrant is so broad that it wraps up innocent people, which is a good argument. I mean, ultimately they grabbed 19 people, they identified, well, they had information on 19 different people, right? So 18 people not involved.

And they were able to, their expert for Chatrie's expert was able to, even those only like, you know, cell phone, serial numbers and like, you know, the IP addresses, whatever they like half of that, no names, they were still able to identify those people, even though Google did not give them all the names. So what we're trying to say here is that this warrants, even though it's, it's anonymized, right? It's like initially it's anonymized like, hey, who was in the space during this time block, right? In this rate, this real offense, who was here for two hours?

Well, Google gave 19 people, but Chatrie's experts were able to identify to the, at least, I'm sorry, more than two of those people, several of those people with just that data and two of those people were sitting in their home. I mean, you got to say, you got to admit like, okay, I mean, if the government's going to get this, anonymized data, it's not a four minute search, then they could, I get, they can, you know, they could deduce who I am without Google telling them who I am. Got it. In a green.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

Complicated. Yeah. Complicated. In the future, that's the, that's why this case is so important. It's like, what is going to happen with, with mass surveillance? That's what this case is really about. So your, your gut on this ruling, good or bad?

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor:

It is good, but I will tell you my, if you would have asked me before Chatrie came out, I would have said no search, but I will tell you the reason I would have said that were two things. Okay. And I was, I was not programmed correctly. Number one is I was in the carpenter, like I read carpenter and carpenter made it very clear that the Supreme Court was concerned about replicating a person's life. Like if you know that they go to church or don't go to church, they go to the brothels or don't go to the brothels, they go to political campaigns. If you can see all that data over time, then you can replicate you like, you know, their actions, like, yeah, he might go to the GOP, you know, offices to, because it's right next to the hair salon.

But if he's going there every, then he might be a campaign worker and so forth. So carpenter made us think that this is a, this is a paint, they call it the mosaic theory. Like it's a mosaic theory. If you have these data points, then you can basically replicate the person's life. And there's some truth to that. And the other thing is I never thought about, I never thought that this location information was not third party. I thought this was the courts have made it pretty clear that a lot of this like once you know only allow your phone to connect to that tower and it connects to Verizon and Verizon knows that location. Huh? Yeah. Then it's basically it's third party, meaning it's not your data anymore. Right.

The argument was actually very well made that's, this is not third party day. This is your data and you're letting them borrow it so that you can use their product. Fascinating stuff. And yeah, just fascinating stuff. Complicated, but you're, you're dumbing it down. So I wish you could dumb it down more. Well, I'll dumb it down more. The more I understand where this is going right now. I'm still trying to figure out like what this means for a for because, because right now it implicates flock cameras. Chatries lawyers say that this actually means that the death of Flock cameras. I don't think that's true, but there are going to be people that are going to use this case to argue that. So we're going to see. so let me ask you this, Anthony.

We've got two, two stories that I'm hoping the cover. And one is about flocks. It's about, I think it's five Georgia cops that got in trouble on using the flock system. And then I, but I've got this, this next one, the judge rules that the law enforcement agencies request for cell-site simulators is overly broad. Which do you want to tackle next?

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor:

Look, the easiest one is the five people accessing flock data. Okay. So let me, let me just bring that up. And it may be a quick one. I definitely want to, you know, hopefully we'll have time to do the other one, but the story you just mentioned a natural segue. So NewsBreak.com. We have four, I'm sorry, five Georgia cops use flock cameras for personal searches according to GBI, which of course is the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. I got to tell you, GBI has got a great reputation among law enforcement around the country. They really do. We have five cops accused of using the flock, the Flock license-plate, camera technology, the readers and South Georgia to make personal searches according to the GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

They were charged with misuse of license-plate data and violation of oath of office in a July 6 statement from the bureau. It gives the names and what the charges were. I'll cover that briefly when we come back. So guys, we're going to take our third commercial break and then we're going to try to wrap up, you know, everything and finish this story and cover one more. So stick with us. We'll be right back. It's a good news. I'm going to talk about this story. I'm going to talk about this story and cover one more. So stick with us. We'll be right back. All right, guys, it's time to talk about gunlearn at GunLearn.com. Hey, there's some new stuff going on with GunLearn.

So if people are watching the show and not familiar of it, you may want to pay attention. Now for starters, GunLearn.com, they are the first and only company that offer a step by step program that takes you from your present knowledge level to become a safe, accurate and competent certified firearm specialist. So here's a deal in the change. They have partnered with a smarter degree in the university partners. And now that Certified Firearms Specialist credential is worth college credits. That's a big deal. And of course they've been doing this practice in 1996. They've been teaching everything that LEOs need to know about firearms and also ammunition to all facets of law enforcement.

You can start today with online training or you can sign up to attend a live seminar. And if you have your own agency, if you're a chief or a sheriff, you can even host a seminar for absolutely no cost. It's an amazing opportunity. You go to GunLearn.com to get more information. And let me add that Certified Firearms Specialist credential, even if you got it five years ago, it may qualify for college credit, GunLearn.com. Welcome back. Leo Roundtable at leo roundtable.com, the law enforcement talk show. My name is Chip DeBlock and I'm your host for joined by attorney Anthony Bandiero with Blue to Gold at Blue to Gold.com Special Agent and search and seizure.

Also we have Sheriff Mark Crider all the way from Walla County in Washington state and former FBI Special Agent. I think Supervisory Special Agent, if I remember correctly. And we left off talking about a NewsBreak.com story. And Georgia cops use the Flock camera system for personal searches according to the GBI. So that means that we have the state's highest law enforcement agency doing the investigation. And these guys are all former cops now. We have a Tatiana Davis 27 years old. She's facing six charges. Jade Jackson 32 charges with three counts. I'm sorry, 32 years old with three counts. And then Nicholas Richardson 30 years old 12 counts and then Brittany Smith 23 and facing two counts. And finally Isaac with us 24 years old.

That's young and facing three counts. It goes on to say that according to the GBI, the Albany Police Department conducted an internal audit of the Flock license-plate reader camera system. found misuse. The internal audit revealed that the officers previously accessed the system on multiple occasions and utilized and retained license plate data for non-law-enforcement purposes. According to GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigation. I want to also throw in that we'll let me just the department then request a GBI. So the department requested them to actually do the investigation back on June 25, 2026, which of course led to arrest and dismissals. I do want to mention that, you know, flock has been under the gun.

And I did read in here that they said, Hey, look, the system works. I mean, they're look as cops, we always bring a human component to this, right? We're fallible. So we're going to there's going to be some cops can make mistakes. But the system arguably works because we had five. There was an audit, five bad cops identified. And look, they not only lost their jobs, but now they're there being prosecuted for it. So I leave it there. But it was the previous story was a natural segue into the Flock camera system. Anthony Bandiero. Well, I mean, to share my also want to pine on this, but really this is, this is just an example of abusing databases. This is not a constitutional issue.

This is just a, you know, they're violating the law by using a law enforcement database for personal use. Most of these cases are romantic harassment, right? They're looking for ex-girlfriends or prospective romantic interests. They're looking, you know, to, you know, track a pretty girl that they stopped on a traffic stop and it's trying to see where she's going so they can just have a little, Hey, hey, How are you doing again?? I didn't know you were at the Starbucks. 90% of these cases, like legitimate or not 90% of these flock abuses are actually romantic issues. But look, I'll just tell you my cops out there, you know, and the sheriff may have a word on this too, but the days of running your babysitter through NCIC are over.

Like, you know what I mean? Just it's over. Like you have to comply with the law. Just you're, you're no different than anybody else. If it's not a criminal investigation, don't abuse it. It's against the law to abuse these systems for personal use. Maybe sheriff has something to add to it because he's the boss. So just kind of an interesting side light. We personally don't have flock cameras in the county, but our adjoining agencies do, which were on a task force.

We have safeguards in place that they have to have a legitimate law enforcement reason to actually run something in the flock system, which is no different than NCIC or anything else exactly what Anthony alluded to with, you know, a legitimate law enforcement reason to use the system. What's interesting to me is if you're familiar with the state of Washington, we had a case in Anthony. This kind of segues into the whole phone thing, but I personally might take on the way the Flock camera system is set up is that the data is collected by flock until we query that data and put that data into a report that we are using for a legitimate law enforcement investigation. That data doesn't belong to us. It belongs to flock.

Well, the state of Washington doesn't agree with my legal view of that just as a disclaimer, I never attended law school. But we actually had a disgruntled former spouse or about to be former spouse do a public-records request for his ex-wife or soon-to-be ex-wife. And the state said we needed to release that information to him, even though a police officer could not conduct that same search. So the flock system, there's a lot of moving parts to that data, who owns the data, how you can query that data and what protection should be put in place in order to protect that data from these types of, you know, serious inquiries from the public. So it's a very interesting in case.

Speaker 1 – Chip DeBlock, Host:

All right. Well, yeah, that is interesting. I think we have barely enough time to do this last story. If that's okay with you guys on Police1.com, judge rules law enforcement agencies request for cell-site simulator is overly broad because it would obtain data from uninvolved citizens.

You know, leave it at the cops come up with some good ideas to catch the bad guys Cleveland, Ohio, a federal magistrate judge shot down in an attempt by investigators to use a cell-site simulator to get cell phone data from a suspect in investigation. so these devices, they trick all cell phones in a wide area and the thinking that they're connecting to a regular cell tower, according to our article, that then extracts the data from all the phones in the area, including serial numbers and other unique identifiers. Now, the judge in this case is US district magistrate, Carmen Henderson and Judge Henderson’s ruling earlier in the week marked a public rebuke of tactics and tools the law enforcement used in investigating crime.

So judge Henderson, she found that the investigators request was overly broad and would have resulted in the capture of thousands of innocent people's cell phone data in heavily populated areas in Akron, Ohio. The search won't remain sealed. It's not reveal any details about the type of investigation that the investigators were looking into. Judge Henderson's ruling only says that it was an investigation center around someone in Akron, Ohio. And it goes on the talk about some other stuff involving this, but we're down the two minutes in 40 seconds. So I'll let Anthony take it from here if that's okay. And the sheriff too. But look, real quick, I got one word, Chatsree.

Chatsree isn't changed the game of all this because now it's not the whole mosaic. The other theory anymore, Carpenter is that idea. It's one piece of data. Does that StingRay, right? That cell-site simulator, does that StingRay gather private information about people? I think it does because you can backtrack it. You can deduce who is in the area and their location and maybe some of the information. I think we have a problem. Sheriff, I think you want to add something too.

Speaker 3 – Sheriff Mark Crider, Panelist:

No, just the fact that I'm trained on all that equipment and I've done this on multiple occasions, always with a warrant, never without a warrant. So I'm not quite having not delved into the case. I'm not quite sure exactly what her issue was other than exactly what you're talking about is we're going to have this long debate on whether or not that is private information or not.

Speaker 2 – Anthony Bandiero, Attorney and Search-and-Seizure Instructor:

If it's not private, then you don't need a warrant. But the question is, okay, look, a lot of people are getting warrants, but the problem is that because I think they're stipulating, right? A lot of bougie legal, they're stipulating that this is a search. Okay, I agree. But the defense attorneys say, all right, it is a search. We agree. Okay, fine. But your warrant is too broad. This is a general warrant that the founding fathers would never have allowed because you're capturing it with these StingRay devices. You're capturing hundreds, thousands, depending on the area of people's information that have nothing to do with this crime. And how are you going to put a safeguard in place, a judicial safeguard?

How is the judge going to approve these warrants so that you're not gathering chips information, but you're gathering anti-information because he's the, you know, how are you going to whittle that down? And that is the, that's above my pay grade. I don't know how you do that. But that's the issue here. Maybe there's, you know, another like layer of, I don't know, I don't want to get into it right now. But the point is, is that's the million dollar question is how do you put a judge between us and what? Well, I think when you gather this information, you're gathering information that is not easily identifiable. So it is, especially if you're, I mean, but it's identifiable 2026. That's the work in 2036.

Because you can de-anonymize this information pretty easily, I think.

Speaker 3 – Sheriff Mark Crider, Panelist:

Well, then, but once you have that information, you have to go and get another warrant to get the actual identification of the numbers and data that you've received. but share, I know, I think we're out of time here to check those out, but share, if that's the problem, the problem is that Chatri lawyers are saying you don't need, you don't need to go back to Google or that to D not de-anonymizes. We can do it with dark-web data and they did it with, they did it with the Chatri data. They actually took the anonymized data and they went to the dark-web and found out these people's, you know, they, you know, this information and they, they were able to deduce who these people were without going back to Google. And that's the issue.

Speaker 3 – Sheriff Mark Crider, Panelist:

Well, guys, I would say I would agree with that. You shouldn't be able to do that. You should go and get us another warrant for the identifying information at that particular phone. Thank you, gentlemen. Excellent. Excellent commentary. Attorney Anthony Bandiero, Sheriff Mark Crider from Walla County. Guys, we're going to be signing off. Come back, watch the show Monday 12 noon Eastern, Galls.com, comply, technology.com, go there and dot com on Medicare dot live in TwoBells.com. Don't forget the ghost discount code. RADIO15 to get 15% off your next order. We'll see you back Monday 12 noon Eastern.