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Monday, new ministers are expected to be sworn in before His Majesty King Abdullah II, as part of the awaited amendment to the government of Bisher Al-Khasawneh.

This came a day after members of Khasawnehs government submitted their resignations, in preparation for the ministerial reshuffle.

Here is the expected list of the new ministers:

-Faisal Al-Shboul, Minister of State for Media Affairs

-Wafaa Bani Mustafa, Minister of State for Legal Affairs

-Khairy Amr, Minister of Investment

-Haifa Al-Najjar Minister of Culture, succeeding Ali Al-Ayed

-Youssef Al-Shamali, Minister of Industry and Trade

-Saleh Al-Kharabsheh, Minister of Energy

-Nayef Istitieh as Minister of Labor

-Wajih Owais, Minister of Education

-Muawiya Al-Radaydah, Minister of Environment

Notably, this is the fourth amendment to the Khasawneh government, the last of which was on March 29 of this year.

His first amendment to the government was made on Dec. 2, 2020, while the second was on March 7, 2021, and the third was on March 29, 2021.

Go here to see the original:
New ministers expected to be sworn in Monday - Roya News English

What this suggests is that a new round of constitutional revisions might be possible in the not-too-distant future.

Our national charter has been reformed and its principles renewed in four waves of constitutional change that occurred during the most turbulent times in American history. The first was from 1789 to 1804, when the founding generation added a dozen amendments in a 15-year period. Chief among them was the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments, adopted in a single bundle to reassure skeptics that a strong national government could be tempered with respect for individual liberty. They also adopted the 11th and 12th Amendments that, respectively, limited citizens lawsuits against states and fixed some defects in the Electoral College.

Then all was quiet on the constitutional front for 61 years, until after the Civil War. Between 1865 and 1870, Republican lawmakers used six years of supermajority control of Congress to drive a second era of amendments that abolished slavery, promised equal citizenship for 4 million newly freed African Americans and barred racial discrimination in voting. Taken together, these amendments laid a second founding for a nation sundered by war. They gave Congress robust new powers to remedy racial injustice while imposing meaningful limits on the excesses of state governments.

And then there was another four decades of polarization and gridlock, marked by the pervasive corruption and vast inequities of the Gilded Age. Eventually, the political pendulum swung and brought a progressive political coalition to power. At the prodding of social movements from the populists to the suffragists to the temperance warriors, lawmakers sought to reverse the extravagance of the previous era. Between 1909 and 1920, Progressive Era reformers added four amendments that authorized the income tax, provided for the popular election of senators, launched Prohibition and extended the franchise to women. The spectacular failure of the nationwide liquor ban notwithstanding (the 21st amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933), these amendments established the foundation for the modern U.S. government.

Finally, a fourth wave, inspired by the political activism of the 1960s civil rights era, added three voting rights amendments to the Constitution: presidential electors for the District of Columbia, abolition of the poll tax, and the lowering of the voting age to 18. A fourth amendment, the 25th, updated and clarified the rules of presidential and vice presidential succession amid the doomsday fears of the nuclear age. The last of this wave was the 26th Amendment, the voting age measure, ratified in 1971.

Today, we find ourselves five decades into the latest dry spell. After the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1980s, many progressives concluded that the Constitutions arduous amending process is not worth the effort. For their part, conservative activists have launched campaigns to win a balanced budget amendment and other ideological policies, which has only bolstered a sense among many that its unwise and even dangerous to tinker with the framers handiwork.

But this sense of defeatism is not new. In 1904, the Washington Post dismissed reformers amendatory schemes, offering the hard-boiled take that our fundamental law is practically unamendable by peaceful and regular methods. And yet, just a half-decade later, that pessimistic prognosis was proven wrong when Congress proposed the first of the Progressive Era amendments.

The presence of certain factors that have prompted past generations of Americans to push for constitutional amendments suggests that a new wave may already be building. Discontent over controversial Supreme Court rulings, for instance, has proven to be a predictable galvanizer of amending activity in previous eras. In fact, seven amendments were motivated by the desire to reverse high court decisions. Today the amendment option is on the table for activists working to overrule Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United, which has allowed corporations and outside groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns.

During periods of gridlock, states sometimes look for workarounds for some of the Constitutions most problematic provisions, and that experimentation is another driver of constitutional amendments. In the early 20th century, when the Senate blocked an amendment giving voters the right to directly elect its members (a power originally given to state legislatures), reformers in the states responded with measures such as the Oregon Plan, which allowed voters to express their Senate preference in a popular referendum. By establishing a de facto system of popular election in much of the country, they forced the Senates hand.

In a similar vein, some states today are pushing to circumvent the Electoral College through the adoption of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote an innovative reform that could lay the groundwork for an amendment to change how we choose the president. Even the Equal Rights Amendment, introduced nearly a century ago, might be back on the agenda thanks to state lawmakers who have revived the effort to ratify it.

It may be hard to imagine, but todays political impasse may eventually give way to a new governing coalition. Look at the Gilded Age a century ago, when mounting social problems fueled a rare consensus for reform. Then, as now, economic inequality was widening as restraints on corporate power eroded and moneyed interests dominated our elections. The nation was polarized along regional lines that mirror todays red state-blue state divide. Immigration was changing the country to the alarm of traditionalists. Elections were won by narrow margins, producing gridlock. And all the while, a conservative Supreme Court stood in the way of needed change. In time, the pressure for reform caused a dramatic leftward swing in national sentiment that few saw coming an earthquake that divided the Republicans, lifted the Democrats and led to the adoption of four amendments after years of fruitless advocacy.

That all sounds a lot like 2021. The country has been going through demographic and economic changes comparable to those in the Gilded Age and a new, diverse generation of voters is on the rise. Like their predecessors in the early 20th century, the new generation has decidedly progressive politics and is leading important social movements.

So theres hope for our Constitution and the political system it governs. While todays partisan rancor and gridlock may currently thwart important national reforms, they may also signal the coming of a new era of constitutional change that could kick-start our countrys journey toward a more perfect Union.

Read the original here:
History Teaches that Constitutional Reforms Come in Waves. We May Be Approaching One Now. - POLITICO

from the thus-answering-the-question-'when-is-a-search-not-a-search' dept

Private searches that uncover contraband can be handed off to law enforcement without the Fourth Amendment getting too involved. Restrictions apply, of course. For instance, a tech repairing a computer may come across illicit images and give that information to law enforcement, which can use what was observed in the search as the basis for a search warrant.

What law enforcement can't do is ask private individuals to perform searches for it and then use the results of those searches to perform warrantless searches of their own. A Ninth Circuit Appeals Court case [PDF] points out another thing law enforcement can't do: assume (or pretend) a private search has already taken place in order to excuse its own Fourth Amendment violation. (h/t Rianna Pfefferkorn)

Automated scanning of email attachments led to a series of events that culminated in an unlawful search. Here's the court's description of this case's origination:

The events giving rise to Luke Wilsons conviction and this appeal were triggered when Google, as required by federal law, reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that Wilson had uploaded four images of apparent child pornography to his email account as email attachments. No one at Google had opened or viewed Wilsons email attachments; its report was based on an automated assessment that the images Wilson uploaded were the same as images other Google employees had earlier viewed and classified as child pornography. Someone at NCMEC then, also without opening or viewing them, sent Wilsons email attachments to the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC), where an officer ultimately viewed the email attachments without a warrant. The officer then applied for warrants to search both Wilsons email account and Wilsons home, describing the attachments in detail in the application.

You can see where things went wrong: the warrantless search engaged in by the officer to view images neither of the other parties had actually opened or inspected. Apparently, Fourth Amendment violations are standard practice at the San Diego ICAC.

NCMEC then forwarded the CyberTip to the San Diego Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC). Agent Thompson, a member of the San Diego ICAC, received the report. He followed San Diego ICAC procedure, which at the time called for inspecting the images without a warrant whether or not a Google employee had reviewed them.

A footnote attached to this paragraph states the new "standard procedure" is to obtain a warrant before opening a CyberTip "when the provider has not viewed the images." The court notes it is "not clear from the record" that this is standard practice at other ICAC offices, or whether they've also been instructed to obtain warrants first from now on. So, more challenges are likely on the way.

The lower court refused to suppress the evidence obtained from Wilson's email account and home, deciding the private search that had never actually occurred was a private search, salvaging the warrantless search that immediately followed the forwarding of the tip by NMCEC.

The Appeals Court disagrees.

First, the government search exceeded the scope of the antecedent private search because it allowed the government to learn new, critical information that it used first to obtain a warrant and then to prosecute Wilson. Second, the government search also expanded the scope of the antecedent private search because the government agent viewed Wilsons email attachments even though no Google employeeor other personhad done so, thereby exceeding any earlier privacy intrusion. Moreover, on the limited evidentiary record, the government has not established that what a Google employee previously viewed were exact duplicates of Wilsons images. And, even if they were duplicates, such viewing of others digital communications would not have violated Wilsons expectation of privacy in his images, as Fourth Amendment rights are personal.

Matching hashes is not enough. And that's all Google and NMCEC had when they forwarded the tip down the line to law enforcement. Just because both entities retain hashes (NMCEC retains images as well) that matched the hashes of the attachment doesn't mean there's no subjective expectation of privacy in one's own email account. A strong probability that the files were child porn is the perfect basis for a warrant request. Unfortunately, the officer decided to engage in a search without one.

Wilson did not have an expectation of privacy in other individuals files, even if their files were identical to his files. The corollary of this principle must also be true: Wilson did have an expectation of privacy in his files, even if others had identical files. If, for example, police officers search someone elses house and find documents evidencing wrongdoing along with notes indicating that I have identical documents in my house, they cannot, without a warrant or some distinct exception to the warrant requirement, seize my copies. I would retain a personal expectation of privacy in them, and in my connection to them, even if law enforcement had a strong basis for anticipating what my copies would contain. A violation of a third partys privacy has no bearing on my reasonable expectation of privacy in my own documents. The government does not argue otherwise.

All of the evidence is suppressed, since it all relies on the initial lawless search. The ICAC in San Diego has, belatedly, put a warrant requirement in place. It won't salvage this conviction, which has been reversed. And it may result in similar suppressions and reversals if the same search-first procedure was used in other child porn cases. But it's always easier to bypass the warrant and get to the searching. After all, not every court will see the facts the same way, as is evidenced by the lower court's refusal to suppress the evidence. But it's now crystal clear in the Ninth Circuit: get a warrant.

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Filed Under: 4th amendment, child sexual abuse materials, scanning, warrant

Read more:
Court Tells Child Sexual Abuse Investigators That The Private Search Warrant Exception Only Works When There's A Private Search - Techdirt

The New York Times recently reported that the FBI had an undercover informant amid the mob that entered the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 who had related to them his knowledge of the demonstrators' plans beforehand and his observations of events in the building in real time. The informant was a genuine member of the Proud Boys, one of the groups the feds are trying to charge with conspiracy to overthrow the government.

According to the Times, the informant told the FBI in advance that there was no plan by his colleagues to disrupt the government. He also reported violence and destruction in the Capitol to his FBI handler as it was happening, and the FBI did nothing timely to stop it.

The presence of the informant as a de facto federal agent at the scene before, during and after the commission of what the government considers to be serious felonies raises serious constitutional questions about the FBI's behavior. The feds have not revealed the existence or identity of this informant; rather, the Times' reporters found out about him and found another person to corroborate what they learned that he did.

Can the government insert a person into a group under criminal investigation -- or "flip" a person who is already in the group -- and use him for surveillance without a search warrant? And, when they do this, must prosecutors tell defense attorneys about their informant, particularly if his knowledge and observations are inconsistent with the government's version of events?

Here is the backstory.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was written to protect the quintessentially American right to be left alone. It was enacted in the aftermath of egregious violations of colonial privacy by British soldiers and agents.

The typical violation of privacy came in the form of British soldiers knocking on the door of a colonial home -- or breaking it down -- bearing a general warrant. A general warrant, issued by a secret court in London or by colonial courts here whose judges were loyal to the king, permitted the bearer to search wherever he wished and seize whatever he found.

The Fourth Amendment was ratified to force the government to focus its searches on evidence of crimes for which the government had probable cause, and to protect the privacy and security of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" by requiring search warrants before the government could invade any of them.

The warrants must be issued by a neutral judge, must be based on probable cause of crime sworn to under oath, and must specifically describe the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized.

In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court realized that the use of electronic surveillance was just as much a search as a physical search, and it required search warrants for the government to be able to use at trial whatever it learned from the surveillance. This is universally accepted today as the contemporary understanding of the Fourth Amendment. Yet, it applies only to searches by government agents or their use of evidence obtained from electronic surveillance. It does not pertain to informants.

Stated differently, the feds and the states need search warrants to bug your bedroom, your office or your cellphone, but they do not need a search warrant to threaten, bribe or employ your neighbor or colleague or brother-in-law to engage you in a conversation about personal behavior and then report the contents of that conversation to them.

The government's argument is that you have waived your right to privacy by trusting the person to whom you were speaking, and that waiver obviates the need for a search warrant.

But the use of an informant can be as invasive as the use of a wiretap. Because the informant is usually capable of getting in the face of the person being surveilled, his presence is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection of "persons." Since the informant can often prod the person to say what he might not say if unprodded, the use of informants is arguably more invasive of privacy and hence more violative of the Fourth Amendment than a wiretap silently recording a conversation.

Now back to Jan. 6 at the Capitol. The Department of Justice requires approval by FBI management before an agent can engage an informant. Thus, senior FBI personnel knew that a trusted member of the Proud Boys trusted by the Proud Boys and by the FBI had advised one of their agents that the group had no plans for violence or disruption of a governmental function. We also know that senior FBI personnel knew that personal injury and property damage were happening at the Capitol and they did nothing to stop it.

The Times reporters promised anonymity to their sources. But their identity is now of paramount importance to some of the folks whom the FBI has arrested and whom federal prosecutors have charged with felonies. If the feds have an eyewitness who works for them -- even though his presence at the scene was unconstitutional -- and whose testimony contradicts the prosecutors' narrative, the feds have a moral and legal obligation to reveal all this to defense counsel.

Who knows what the FBI knew of Jan. 6 ahead of time and did nothing or why it conveniently looked the other way during the events in the Capitol? We do know that every FBI agent and federal prosecutor has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, whether convenient or not.

The Fourth Amendment is the framers' value judgement that the privacy of all persons is a greater moral good than the government's convenience. It is an intentional obstacle to law enforcement to keep it respectful of our rights. Why do we hire the FBI to protect our safety but permit it to invade our liberty?

Judge Andrew Napolitano's column is syndicated by Creators.

View post:
Napolitano: On Jan. 6, what did the FBI know? - The Winchester Star

Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

Ed Mullins, the controversial head of one of the largest cop unions in New York City and a bitter foe of police reform, resigned from his position as Sergeants Benevolent Association president following early-morning FBI raids on his office and home on Tuesday.

Federal agents hit the Manhattan headquarters of the Sergeants Benevolent Association and Mullinss home on Long Island, according to the New York Post, in what the FBI said was part of an ongoing investigation that the Post said involves accusations of mail and wire fraud. Agents seized computer gear from his residence, per the Post, and were seen carting off boxes of documents from SBA headquarters. The SBA did not respond to a request for comment.

The SBA is the second-largest of the citys five police unions, which represent the citys nearly 35,000 officers, including Mullins, who is a sergeant. He was elected president of the SBA in 2002 and has been a thorn in the side of four commissioners, Bill Bratton, the police commissioner under both Bill de Blasio and Rudy Giuliani, told New York last year. On Tuesday night, the SBA announced that Mullins had resigned upon request by the unions executive board:

The New York Daily News reports that Mullins officially filed for retirement Wednesday after turning in his gun and badge. Sgt. Vincent Vallelong, previously the SBAs vice president, will now take over as president.

Mullins has frequently made offensive comments on race and crime, once comparing an arrested NFL player to a wild animal. Many of these comments came from the official SBA Twitter account, which Mullins controls, and included calling Representative Richie Torres a first class whore and Dr. Oxiris Barbot, then the citys health commissioner, a bitch.In another, the Civilian Complaint Review Board is called a disgrace for a tweet reminding New Yorkers about their Fourth Amendment rights, which protect them from unlawful search and seizure. Last year, the SBA account posted the arrest report on Chiara de Blasio, the mayors daughter, which included personal information such as her birth date and home address.

Earlier this year, the CCRB recommended three misconduct charges against Mullins: two counts of offensive language for the comments against Torres and Barbot and one count of abuse of authority for the arrest report. Last month, Mullins was put on trial in a departmental hearing on the charges.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

See the rest here:
Belligerent Boss of an NYPD Union Resigns After His Home Is Raided by FBI - New York Magazine