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Maricopa County Attorney Bans iPhones for Prosecutors

Maricopa County Attorney Bill MontgomeryWith Apple fighting the FBI about unlocking the San Bernardino’s shooters iPhone and creating a backdoor for the government to unlock all iPhones, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said today that his office will no longer provide iPhones to prosecutors and other employees.

“Apple’s refusal to cooperate with a legitimate law enforcement investigation to unlock a phone used by terrorists puts Apple on the side of terrorists instead of on the side of public safety,” Montgomery said. “Positioning their refusal to cooperate as having anything to do with privacy interests is a corporate PR stunt and ignores the Fourth Amendment protections afforded by our Constitution.”

Citing privacy concerns, Apple is standing up to the U.S government and the National Security Agency by not allowing them backdoor access to all iPhones.

With citizens around the nation using their iPhones for private conversations, photos, music, notes, calendars, contacts, finances and health, government access to iPhones could be viewed as an invasion of privacy.

The Legal Challenges of “Freedom of Speech” on Social Media

In the United States, we have the right to speak freely about our religious, political, economic or any other “controversial” viewpoints. We are also avid social media users, which makes for an interesting mix of people: having the right to say what they want, and being provided with outlets to let them do so on a national and global level.

Recently, a young student was suspended from Texas Christian University by school officials after posting on Facebook and tweeting questionable responses to the Baltimore riots. After the University responded by stating they didn’t approve of the comments, the student had even more to say.

Is this fair for a university to inflict sanctions on a student who has the right to say whatever he or she desires? It depends. In today’s world, while freedom of speech is a right, it doesn’t necessarily mean immunity from punishment.

Another local incident occurred when a woman tweeted a negative comment about having to start her new job the following day, and then was terminated after her future boss saw the tweet.

The outcomes of these situations are realistic, yet the public still questions the legality. From an employee or student point of view, many feel that whatever they say outside of work or school can’t affect them. Employers or school officials on the other hand, have the ability to make certain decisions, especially when the entity is privately owned.

These situations also become challenging when it comes to public employees such as law enforcement officers and agencies. While public employees maintain equal rights in regards to the First Amendment compared to those who aren’t public employees, “the courts have recognized that the government has considerably more ability as an employer to regulate its employees’ speech than it would simply as a sovereign,” according to Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Ultimately, freedom of speech is complex and social media allows for the perfect medium in which users don’t necessarily fear or understand the legal sanctions of their words.

FBI: Charleston Church Shooter Shouldn’t Have Passed Background Check

The FBI reports that Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof should not have been allowed to purchase the gun he used during the attack.

FBI Director James Comey said Roof was arrested for weeks before the shooting, but he was still able to purchase a gun because the paperwork for the offense was incomplete and inaccurate at the time, according to the Associated Press.

Those who wish to purchase a gun in South Carolina must undergo an FBI background check, however, if state and federal records are not up to date at the time of the background check, anyone who shouldn’t normally be able to buy a gun, like Roof, can slip through the cracks.

The FBI examiner who conducted Roof’s background check didn’t see that he had previously been arrested for admitting to possessing drugs due to issues on the rap sheet.

This arrest should have disqualified him from purchasing a gun, according to FBI rules, but he was able to get the gun within three days because the examiner didn’t have sufficient information to deny him.

An error like this reveals huge issues in state gun laws and the background check process, but is South Carolina the only state where this mistake could happen? What are the gun laws in Arizona?

Similar to South Carolina, those who wish to purchase a gun in Arizona must also undergo an FBI background check since neither state is a point of contact for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”) database, which would allow the state to conduct its own background check using state and federal records and databases.

If the person already has an Arizona state permit to purchase or possess a firearm, they may be exempt from a background check. Even if they have committed crimes what would make them ineligible to possess a gun, they may be protected by their old permit if the state doesn’t update its records before they can make a purchase.

This means that yes, someone like Roof who is considered a prohibited possessor and shouldn’t be allowed to possess or purchase any type of firearm could still be able to get a gun in Arizona.

FBI Reviews Thousands of Criminal Cases Involving Flawed Hair Forensics

After discovering that flawed testimonies were made by most FBI examiners in almost all trials offering hair forensics as evidence against defendants for the past several decades, the Justice Department and FBI formally acknowledged this error and have begun a long list of reviews.

The Washington Post reports that legal analysts have suspected problems with forensic techniques based on patterns for decades. Hair and bite mark comparisons have been criticized because the examiner is left to make a subjective call on whether the patterns match.

To put the gravity of this admission into perspective, the FBI has identified 2,500 cases so far that reported hair matches, with 342 completed reviews by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project.

Of the 342, there were 268 cases that used hair forensics to convict defendants, and 257 of these cases included wrongful testimonies from examiners.

In fact, 26 of 28 of these examiners gave exaggerated testimonies favoring prosecutors. That is 95 percent of cases in which forensics were inaccurately used against defendants from 1986 to 2000.

While there could be other evidence involved in these trials that lead to guilty convictions, this large of an error by the FBI could mean hundreds of others have been wrongly convicted or sentenced to death.

It’s likely that the 2,500 under review are just a fraction of the countless other cases that have suffered the same injustices because not all state records from decades ago are available, and some police and prosecutors aren’t answering requests for more information.

In addition, it’s possible that even more cases have been misguided by the same style of testimony. The FBI’s examiners under review have taught 500 to 1,000 other crime lab analysts nationwide their methods.

As a result, several states including New York, North Carolina and Texas have started reviewing cases involving hair forensics, and at least 15 others are expected to do the same.

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