Not surprisingly, clever lawyers find a way to make something slightly novel in most every one of these cases, at least in one particular circuit, and so basically nothing of consequence happens.
This entire doctrine only exists because the Supreme Court invented it, 8-1, in the 1960's to prevent Freedom Riders from suing courts and police officers who arrested them for trying to racially integrate public places. And somehow it's gotten worse over time.
The modern over-expansion of QI actually started in 1982:
>The modern test for qualified immunity was established in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982).
Since then, while several justices (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Sotomayor ) have sometimes dissented and criticized the over expansion of QI, the overall court doesn't seem to want to touch it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-lega...
The net effect is that it is remarkably difficult to sue cops who violate your rights since there is almost always going to be some minor factual thing that makes your case "unique".
Person running down the sidewalk pursued by someone shouting "stop, thief!" gets tackled by a cop and cuffed. Turns out to be mistaken identity or they'd done self-checkout. Rights violation? Yes. Good faith? Also, yes.
Not sure that'd be a rights violation. The cop would be able to say they had reasonable suspicion that a crime was being committed justifying the detention. Excessive force is a possibility depending on the details, such as the extent of the injuries that resulted from being forced to the ground or if the cop ordered the runner to stop before tackling them.
Of course, in reality it's moved well beyond that into the realm of absurdity.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse for civilians, police aren't held to the same standard.
That being said, there's no justification for sharing the nudes. Doesn't matter if you have a warrant, that's still wrong.
Even if everybody with a brain can look at the facts and say "well that's obviously a violation of rights" the court can happily say "nope there is some minor factual delta that means that we haven't explicitly ruled on this exact circumstance so how could a cop ever know that they were violating rights?"
Because the sharing of the photos with other people wasn't established by the evidence, the court was just ruling on whether the DA had violated the plaintiffs rights by transferring the data dump from the plaintiff's phone to the sheriff, and whether that violation was obvious/established enough from prior court rulings to revoke QI. It had nothing to do with sharing the photos themselves with anyone (the DA didn't know the data dump had the photos when he shared it).
I've come across compromising data over the years--and never have I referred to it in any way that would permit identification of the person. Either it warrants going to the police or it stays private, there's no in between.
Which is all just to say: don't talk to cops and don't agree to searches, even if you think dating one will help you get out of trouble.
Who do you call when you're being harassed by the people you're supposed to call when you're being harassed? ... Luckily for her, she had a cousin that was a 20-year NYPD veteran. Him and some other veterans cops went to "have a talk" with the younger cop. Problem solved, but it was a total nightmare for her.
The people who trust cops are the most at risk of this. Those who don’t know their rights or who are afraid to assert them are also at risk.
The people who have already internalized this statement are least at risk.
But we are all at risk when police are corrupt. And the fact that police who do these things still have jobs means that the number of corrupt officers is far larger than it should be.
>But all three judges upheld a lower court’s decision to grant Carpenter qualified immunity and dismiss the woman’s lawsuit.
This is confusing, if there was no warrant, and they violated her 4th amendment rights… how do they get QI?