Common Sense with Paul Jacob

The case of U.S. v. Kyle, heard in the Northern District Court of Oklahoma, is a complicated one. But it has been decided. And the result is especially interesting: “ALPR technology comes with remarkable benefits that the Court cannot ignore. But the Fourth Amendment requires courts to draw a line when the cost is too great.”

Paul Jacob has written about the underlying issue before — most recently in August. “ALPR” tech stands for “Automatic License Plate Recognition” instrumentation, which translates, in the common tongue, to “Flock cameras” . . . and their linked a.i. systems. And U.S. v. Kyle has been decided for Ms. Kyle and against Flock:

[Officer] Alaniz’s search in just the ALPR system provided him with more than 50 individual records of [defendant Melisa Susan] Kyle’s whereabouts across the country for an entire month. The Court finds that because the ALPR systems Alaniz used to search Kyle’s historical location information intruded on her reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of her physical movements, it was a search under the Fourth Amendment.

The upshot? “IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that the Defendant’s Opposed Motion to Suppress [ECF No. 47] is GRANTED. . . .”

The Flock surveillance advance has received major pushback at last.

It may be that President Donald Trump is most loved (to the extent he is loved at all — his approval ratings are way down) for they edgy things he says:

• “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. . . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
• “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”
• “Because you’d be in jail.”

That last was directed towards Hillary Clinton in the Second Presidential Debate of 2016. But, once winning the presidency, Trump did nothing against her. In this, his second administration, he is doing something against her, sort of, for the the administration “asked the Supreme Court on Oct. 9 to revive his dismissed civil lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and others.” This is from The Epoch Times:

The president alleges they conspired to create and spread a false story that his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.

Lower courts rejected the case and ordered Trump and one of his attorneys, Alina Habba, to pay almost $1 million in sanctions. The trial judge and the appeals court called the lawsuit “frivolous,” saying it had no legal merit and appeared aimed at political grievance rather than a valid claim.

Trump is now asking the nation’s highest court to review the appeals court’s decision upholding both the dismissal and the sanctions.

While he was out of office after losing the 2020 election, Trump initiated the lawsuit in federal court in Florida in March 2022, under a federal racketeering law known as civil RICO. That law allows private individuals to seek damages when they claim someone engaged in a pattern of illegal activities, such as fraud or conspiracy.

Arguably, President Trump is aiming to salve an itch first scratched in that debate, and which his supporters have been feeling all jittery about since, if saying nothing.

The Epoch Times article does not discuss the political element so much as the legal one:

In September 2022, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks threw out Trump’s lawsuit against Clinton on multiple grounds, including that Trump waited too long to pursue some of the claims. Middlebrooks compared Trump’s lawsuit to a “two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him.” The judge later imposed sanctions on Trump and Habba for filing a case he said was calculated “to ‌dishonestly advance a political narrative,” and for misusing the courts.

In 2025, the 11th Circuit affirmed Middlebrooks, including the sanctions, saying that many of Trump’s and Habba’s legal arguments “were indeed frivolous.”

In the new filing, the attorneys said the time limit for launching the suit should have been extended because Trump opted to delay filing during his first term of office so he could focus on executing his constitutional responsibilities as the nation’s chief executive.

The full article is worth reading.