Basically the judge agreed with the defendant that the FBI breaking the internet and then pretending to be repair techs sent in to fix it was an illegal search and thus anything they saw during their visit was in admissible (suppressed).
As there were a couple of instances of that they have to file a few more motions to suppress the rest of the FBI evidence but basically it looks like the judge will come down on their side.
In general I am glad that the judge decided that way, it should never be acceptable for law enforcement to go snooping around without a warrant. However, I've also noted in such cases that when the government loses like this they often put pressure on the property owners to avoid such losses in the future, and so I would not be surprised if Cesar's and other hotel chains will start including in their room contract, language clauses that allow them to grant access to the rooms to third parties with "reasonable need".
> language clauses that allow them to grant access to the rooms to third parties with "reasonable need"
It's already almost certainly there. Its also there in virtually all rental agreements; the existing caselaw (cited in this decision) supports the position that using the managements authority to access for 'need' as a pretext for a search is unlawful.
> Its also there in virtually all rental agreements; the existing caselaw (cited in this decision) supports the position that using the managements authority to access for 'need' as a pretext for a search is unlawful.
Does that same caselaw imply that if police want to search an apartment without a warrant, and a landlord lets them in, but the tenant did not grant permission, the search was illegal? I was under the impression that that was permitted, which is a downside of living in an apartment/rental.
Tenant's rights laws usually ban the landlord from entering the apartment without notice (except in the case of an emergency). So they presumably don't have a right to enter that they can extend to the police.
A few searches say that the landlord cannot consent to the search. A sample result:
There was a case, I can't remember the specifics, of a drug bust where there was more than one person in the house, the person charged did not want the police to come in, but someone else ended up letting them in. The search was contested as unlawful, but I'm not sure how it turned out...
Edit: Here it is, as long as they arrest the disagreeing party and remove them from the home, the Supreme court ruled the arrested party can no longer object to the search, and in that case they don't need a warrant. So I think the racket is they claim exigent circumstances to enter, arrest you, and then perform the search.
Curious about this as well. I was under the impression that even though you might not own your apartment or house (or in the case of a mortgage wherein the bank really owns it), you still have protections due to it being your home.
"Here, the government disrupted the internet service to the
defendant’s hotel room in order to generate a repair call. Government agents then posed as repairmen to gain access to the defendant’s room and conduct a surreptitious search for evidence of an illegal sports betting operation. By creating the need for a third party to enter defendant’s premises and then posing as repairmen to gain entry, the government violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights."
A bad a precedent (government sidestepping obtaining a warrant by just shutting down utilities and posing as repairmen) was shot down by a district court despite the magistrate judge suggesting that it didn't violate the 4th amendment because the defendant was not coerced/put under duress into consent. The district judge thought otherwise.
