When police in the small Maryland city of Hagerstown used an Instagram photo to search the states drivers license database for a suspect they violated the Constitution, Federal Laws and various State Laws that make such searches illegal and unconstitutional. They illegally used a cutting edge, facial recognition program to track down a robbery suspect. It was one of the first such cases to come to light.
A FORMER FEMALE police officer, Anne Marie Rasmusson, suspecting randy colleagues were abusing Minnesota’s driver’s license database to look her up, discovered that 104 officers in 18 different agencies across the state had accessed her driver’s license record 425 times, using the state database violated her privacy and her Fourth Amendment Right To Privacy.
An audit found officers in the Dakota County Sheriff’s office, Bloomington Police, and state troopers, were among those who illegally accessed the file of Anne Marie Rasmusson over the course of nearly four years. There were 24 police officers in Minneapolis who accessed her record 133 times, and 42 officers in St. Paul who looked her up 175 times. A female officer in St. Paul looked up Rasmusson’s record 30 times over the course of two years.
Former U.S. State Department research analyst Lawrence Yontz illegally accessed the passport records for then-presidential candidates Obama, McCain and Clinton. Yontz admitted that between 2005 and 2008, he read the passport applications of “approximately 200 celebrities, athletes, actors, politicians and their immediate families, musicians, game show contestants, members of the media corps, prominent business professionals, colleagues, associates, neighbors and individuals identified in the press,” according to the Justice Department.
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Visits: 19
