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Re:FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home by perihelions on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @01:02PM (#46619633)
> "And what if something turns up which would retroactively justify it?"

US constitutional law prohibits the introduction of evidence obtained illegally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule ("Exclusionary rule")

There's no "retroactive" exception. The core point of this rule is to deter police from intentionally violating people's rights, under the expectation that what they find will, "retroactively", vindicate them. Won't work.

Re:FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home by lurk2 on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @01:56PM (#46620804)
> Won’t work.

How would you know when it did? You can’t “retroactively” justify an arbitrary search under the exclusionary rule, but this doesn’t exclude evidence tangential to a legally-executed warrant during the execution of that warrant. For example, suppose someone is suspected of illegally possessing wildlife. A search warrant is issued on the residence. No wildlife is found, and in fact no wildlife was ever on the premises. If officers find large quantities of cocaine during the search, they aren’t precluded from making an arrest, because the warrant used to gain entry and conduct the search was legal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Re:FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home by roywiggins on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @02:19PM (#46621245)
Only if it falls under the "plain view" doctrine, which is not unlimited:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine

> In Arizona v. Hicks, police officers were in an apartment investigating a shooting and suspected that a record player in the apartment was stolen. The officers could not see the serial number, which was on the bottom of the record player, so they lifted the player and confirmed that its serial number matched that of one that had been reported stolen. However, the Supreme Court ruled that lifting the record player constituted an additional search (although a relatively nonintrusive one) because the serial number was not in plain view.

Re:FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home by datsci_est_2015 on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @02:12PM (#46621115)
See also: parallel construction, which has come up (rightfully so) in HN threads about dragnet surveillance.
Re:FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home by LocalH on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @04:57PM (#46624248)
Constitutional law doesn't mean anything when the authorities don't respect it. Constitutional law won't stop you from being arrested or killed if you don't fully submit to an authoritarian government.

There were laws in Germany to prevent what Hitler did. It still happened.

Re:FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home by pc86 on Thursday January 15, 2026 @08:56AM (#46632587)
Depends what you mean by "the authorities." It's a demonstrable fact there are many small local PDs that don't give a shit about the first, fourth, or fifth amendments to name a few. That doesn't mean the Constitution "doesn't mean anything" in those places.