50 years ago... Inside... - Chattanooga Bar Association

10 Friday, February 20, 2009 HAMILTON COUNTY HERALD
Civil liberties seek to require warrants for GPS surveillance
A diverse group of civil liberties
and religious organizations this week
weighed in on the question of
whether police need a warrant in
order to conduct surveillance of personal
vehicles by secretly attaching
global positioning satellite (GPS)
transmitters. The case, which is
scheduled to be heard next month in
New York’s highest court, has profound
implications for the privacy
rights of individuals and organizations.
Low-cost GPS transmitters can
be secretly attached to a vehicle and
pinpoint the vehicle’s location on
public or private property, within a
few feet or yards, to virtually any
computer with an Internet connection.
The devices are useful for tracking
a vehicle or person in real-time,
but the data also can be permanently
stored and subjected to pattern analysis,
revealing not just a person’s
whereabouts, but his habits, associa-
AT FIRST BLUSH, IT
FEELS LIKE LOVE
Dear Amy: Around seven
months ago, I met “Brian.”
He’s smart, funny and sweet.
He respects me (although he
occasionally jokes about the fact
that I am a lot shorter than he
is), and we have fun together.
Sounds perfect, right?
Wrong. Here’s the problem: I’m
only 14. He’s 16.
I truly feel as if I’m in love
with him. I can’t stop thinking
about him, and whenever his
name is mentioned, I start blushing
out of control. I’ve had
crushes before, but this one is
way more than a simple crush.
Do you think 14 is too
young to find love? —Crushed
Out
Dear Crushed: I don’t think
that 14 is too young to find love,
but I do think that 14 is too
young to have love.
I’m an old crank when it
comes to love. Love is a wonder-
tions, who his friends are, where he
shops, banks and goes to church, and
a host of other information. The
coalition argues that court supervision
should be required to protect
First and Fourth Amendment privacy
rights.
In People v. Weaver, scheduled
for argument in the New York Court
of Appeals March 24, the court will
be considering whether a police officer,
in his own discretion, may undertake
GPS surveillance of individuals
without any judicial oversight at all.
The court below held that there is no
obligation to obtain a warrant prior
to undertaking such monitoring.
Members of the public have no way
of knowing if their movements are
subject to electronic surveillance
from which there is no legal protection.
The civil liberties alliance filed
an amicus curiae, or “friend of the
court,” brief arguing such unfettered
ful terminus at the end of a
whole series of choices and experiences.
At your age, you shouldn’t
even be at the starting gate
— you should be going to the
multiplex with your friends, and
love should be in the far-off distance.
You’re going to read
Shakespeare one of these days
and declare me to be all wrong.
The story of the adolescent
lovers in “Romeo and Juliet” is
often offered up as an example of
perfect teen love.
But Romeo and Juliet hardly
knew each other, just as you
and your wonderful guy hardly
know each other.
Take your time. Enjoy these
feelings. Make sure you and
“Brian” are always nice to each
other. But don’t jump into love.
Dear Amy: My boyfriend of
less than a year has decided to
quit smoking, mostly because I
hate it.
He went on a prescription
surveillance is unconstitutional and
ill-advised as a matter of public policy.
The groups include the National
Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers (NACDL), the New York
State Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers, the New York
State Defenders Association, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, the
American-Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee, the Sikh
American Legal Defense and
Education Fund, the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, and the
Union for Reform Judaism. They
urge the court to condition GPS
monitoring upon judicial issuance of
a warrant.
The brief was written by Susan
J. Walsh, a partner at Moskowitz,
Book & Walsh, LLP in New York
City, NACDL Executive Director
Norman L. Reimer and NACDL
Assistant Director of Public Affairs &
pill that cuts the craving. So far
it’s been a couple of weeks and
it’s working to cut his craving,
but a side effect is that he is now
constantly angry at me.
When I try to cheer him up
and tell him how proud I am of
him, he seems to get mad at
that!
This is hard. For one thing,
it’s a new relationship and I
haven’t seen him angry with me
before. And although I don’t like
this new behavior, I still want
him to quit smoking.
This also comes at a time
when I am having some family
issues, and I really want my
boyfriend to be there for me
emotionally, but he has been
withdrawn.
I want to be sympathetic to
what either this pill or the nicotine
withdrawal is doing to him,
but it’s hard for me to be 100 percent
supportive when I’m not
feeling support from him, though
we have both made it clear that
we want to keep our relationship
going.
How do you think I should
handle this? —Struggling to
Stay Strong
Dear Struggling: Aside from
any side effects and withdrawal
symptoms your boyfriend might
still be experiencing, he proba-
Communications Ivan J.
Dominguez.
“By its nature, GPS is a valuable
tool because it permits long-term,
sustained surveillance. But its potential
for abuse is staggering. To allow
this kind of personal data collection
without judicial oversight is an
Orwellian nightmare. The minimal
time required to obtain a warrant
based on probable cause restores balance
and cannot credibly be said to
impede legitimate law enforcement
objectives,” explains lead counsel
Susan J. Walsh.
A dissenting opinion in the case
rejected the analogy that the use of
GPS is the functional equivalent of
being followed by the police on public
roads. Relying upon the search
and seizure provisions of New York
State’s Constitution, the dissent concluded
that “while the citizens of this
state may not have a reasonable
bly would feel better if he
stopped smoking not for you, but
for himself.
His choice to stop smoking
for you means that he is less likely
to stay on the wagon, because
you can’t be around all the time
to cheer for him or absorb his
bad moods.
I suggest you drop this topic
entirely. Trust that your guy is
struggling, help him if he asks,
but otherwise stay away from his
choice to smoke — or not
smoke.
He should see the person
who prescribed his medication
to double-check the side effects.
It might be best to step down the
dosage and move on to another
method of kicking his habit.
You have a right to expect
your boyfriend to be decent to
you, even when he’s in a foul
“wish-I-had-a-cigarette” mood.
It’s time to tell him that. If he
chooses to resume smoking and
you can’t bear it, then you will
have some decisions to make.
Dear Amy: Recently a
neighbor installed some kind of
generator or hot tub, and the
motor produces an almost constant
and noticeable hum in our
backyard.
Because it is winter, I
haven’t tried to find out what
expectation of privacy in a public
place at any particular moment, they
do have a reasonable expectation
that their every move will not be
continuously and indefinitely monitored
by a technical device without
their knowledge, except where a warrant
has been issued based on probable
cause.”
According to Norman Reimer,
the executive director of NACDL,
“Permitting unlimited, around-theclock,
uninterrupted 24/7 monitoring
of an individual’s whereabouts is
as much a First Amendment issue as
it is a Fourth Amendment issue.” He
points out that “the government can
learn where a person worships, what
clubs they attend, what political parties
they participate in, where they
sleep, and other personal and private
information completely irrelevant to
legitimate law enforcement needs.”
Source: NACDL ❖
Commentary: Ethical considerations in leveraging demonstratives
by Daniel Wolfe and Lance Johnson
The Daily Record Newswire
Using demonstratives to tell a
story during trial can be critical to
the success of a case. Employing a
multi-modal presentation strategy,
one that coordinates both visual and
auditory elements, can immeasurably
increase the persuasive impact
of your case for two reasons.
First, multiple communication
channels enhance jurors’ working
memory capacity, which ultimately
increases retention of the information
presented.
Second, because most jurors
rely predominantly on their visual
learning abilities when processing
new information, visual imagery
enables jurors to better absorb and
comprehend facts and circumstances.
While this approach is highly
effective, the use of a visual strategy
that includes demonstratives, graphics,
illustrations and/or animations
raises important ethical considerations
when leveraging these mechanisms
as persuasion tools.
How do jurors, lawyers and the
judiciary perceive the duties of candor
and accurate representation of
the evidence? What factors enhance
the effectiveness and admissibility of
graphic and demonstrative evidence?
This article will aid lawyers to
advocate zealously within the
bounds of common sense and decency
and provide steps for maximizing
the impact and use of demonstrative
exhibits at trial, arbitration, mediation
and other advocacy settings.
Jurors’ learning styles
The concept of “learning styles”
suggests there is no one best way to
educate every person. Instead, people
are presumed to have different
strengths and preferences concerning
the manner in which they perceive,
process and retain information.
Several models have proposed
various ways to describe the learning
styles concept, suggesting that people
tend to represent information primarily
as words or as images, and that
people vary in terms of which modality
induces them to learn most optimally
(i.e., visual, auditory or kinesthetic
- touch).
Not surprisingly, 29 percent of
American adults rank at the “basic”
level of literacy (able to perform only
simple and everyday literacy activi-
Ask Amy
Advice for the Real World
By Amy Dickinson, Tribune Media
ties); 14 percent rank as “below
basic”; and only 13 percent rank as
“proficient” at performing complex
and challenging literacy activities.
Put another way, most jurors on your
jury spend far more time consulting
their “visual sketch pad” than their
“verbal diary.”
The bottom line is that visual
images, rather than words, dominate
most people’s thinking, and visual
images are the modality through
which most people are most comfortable
and best able to learn.
Ethical obligations
Lawyers have ethical duties of
candor and to represent the facts
accurately when using demonstrative
evidence. As a practical matter,
lawyers are often left to rely on their
own sense of decency and common
sense.
Understandably, there must be
a balance between persuasion and
prejudice; the exhibit must be probative
of a fact in issue without being
unduly biased. In this regard, information
design techniques relating to
aesthetic appeal and persuasion
come into play.
Among other things, these
considerations include scaling techniques,
icons and color. The key is to
make sure that creativity doesn’t
come at the expense of accuracy or
by misrepresenting the evidence.
One of the most important
issues to consider is scaling. Often
times, counsel has to present data to
the trier of fact in a table or chart. Bar
charts are a common method to
illustrate such information. Scale
always comes into play when designing
bar charts. The y-axis in particular
can be used to accentuate or minimize
the data depending on how the
graphic is designed.
For example, two charts can
incorporate the same data and show
the change of sales from $900,000 in
one month to $855,000 in the next.
However, one can vary the scaling
range on the y-axis to impact dramatically
the immediate message
that is reflected; specifically, the first
chart can illustrate an impressive
drop-off from one month to the
next, whereas the second suggests
that the sales were fairly consistent
from a month-to-month basis.
Although both are accurate, scale
radically affects the visual message of
these two charts.
Another graphic design element
that is important to consider is
whether to use icons. Icons are
ingrained in our day-to-day lives and
for a good reason. While words can
be quite informative and helpful,
they can also be visually limiting or
confusing. Icons are a powerful
CliffsNotes version of ideas, events,
objects and much more.
Icons allow you to define a concept
visually without the need for
words. Beyond being an economic
form of communication, icons are
also effective because they can convey
points that would otherwise
necessitate a lengthy explanation,
and together they can construct a
pattern that the eye is more likely to
identify than if it were viewing text
alone.
For instance, suppose you are
the defense and are presenting an
opening argument for a personal
injury case involving a plaintiff who
had dozens of doctor’s visits prior to
the accident at issue. Rather than
identifying each of the doctor’s visits
with text, it would be far more visually
effective to use a medical cartouche
icon to represent each visit.
The repeated pattern will make the
graphic more powerful than text
alone.
Continued on page 11
the source of the noise is, but I
spend a lot of time outdoors, and
we sleep with our windows open
in the summer and the hum is
disturbing.
How do I approach
whichever neighbor it is to talk
about this? —Karen in Oregon
Dear Karen: First you need
to try to identify the source of
the noise. Then contact your
neighbors, assuming they aren’t
aware of the imposition. The
sooner you do this, the more
time they will have to try to muffle
the noise. If they don’t rectify
the situation, then research your
local noise ordinance to see if
they might be in violation.
If this disturbs you, it
undoubtedly bothers other people.
(Send questions via e-mail
to askamy@tribune.com or by
mail to Ask Amy, Chicago
Tribune, TT500, 435 N.
Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL
60611. Amy Dickinson’s memoir,
“The Mighty Queens of
Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter
and the Town that Raised
Them” (Hyperion), will be published
in February.)
© 2009 BY THE CHICA-
GO TRIBUNE DISTRIBUTED
BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SER-
VICES, INC. ❖