Hidden in Plain View

Texts from Hillary? As Orin Kerr explains in the Washington Post, it is far from clear that what the FBI is doing right now with a computer it seized from Anthony Weiner—searching for evidence of a crime involving his estranged wife Huma Abedin and her boss Hillary Clinton—is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. While it is true that the FBI now has obtained a second warrant allowing it to extend its review of the laptop’s contents beyond its original search for evidence pertaining to Weiner’s sexting with minors, the doctrine of “plain view” searches is far from settled. And as Kerr writes, “The plain view exception does not allow evidence to be seized outside a warrant unless it is ‘immediately apparent’ upon viewing it that it is evidence of another crime.” FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress, which set off a firestorm late Friday, only says that the emails on Weiner’s computer ‘appear to be pertinent.'” As Kerr adds:

The Fourth Amendment plain view standard doesn’t allow a seizure of emails based on a mere we-hope-to-later-determine standard. The government can’t seize the emails just because the Clinton investigation is extra important and any possible evidence is worth considering. Rather, the Fourth Amendment requires the initial look at the emails to generate “immediate” probable cause that they are evidence of a crime first, before their seizure is permitted and used to get a second warrant.

Just posted: It’s time to start “preparing for the campaign tech bullshit season,” Civicist contributing editor Dave Karpf writes, reflecting on a highly touted recent story by Josh Green and Sasha Issenberg about the Trump campaign’s tech efforts. He writes:

The Trump organization has exhibited zero evidence of data sophistication. Their modeling talk sounds cheap and phony. If the Trump campaign dissuades liberals from the voting booth, it isn’t going to be through microtargeted Facebook posts. It’s going to be through old-fashioned voter intimidation and polling place manipulation.

Related: Propublica’s Julia Angwin and Terry Parris Jr. report that, in clear violation of federal laws preventing discrimination in housing and employment, Facebook gives advertisers the ability to exclude specific groups that it calls “ethnic affinities.” Shown these racial exclusion options, a top civil rights lawyer told them, “This is horrifying. This is massively illegal. This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.”

Note to enterprising reporters: Can you find examples of a political campaign that might be using this racial exclusion option to target its Facebook ads at particular groups?

Working with election data collected by the Center for Technology and Civic Life, Facebook has rolled out a new tool that should make it easy for voters to check out a sample ballot prior to voting that shows all the races and issues on their ballot. The tool makes it possible for a user to show their friends who they are planning to vote for.

Facebook is also planning to remind its American users on Election Day to go out and vote, using a tool it calls the “voter megaphone”—something it has done here since 2008 and in 47 countries worldwide. Facebook has yet to release a long-promised research study on the impact of the megaphone on 2012 election turnout; in 2010 the tool increased turnout by a measured 320,000 votes. We have to trust the company when it says that it’s showing the same prompts to every user.

Design challenges: This piece by Bernie Hogan in the Times Literary Supplement about Facebook’s moral responsibility to do more to counter the “filter bubble” effect it generates, reads surprisingly a lot like our columnist Tom Steinberg’s piece on the same topic back in June, all the way down to the Brexit and Trump references.

Tressie McMillan Cottom explains why Twitter’s planned redesign of how it shows replies will make the troubled platform an even more toxic and dangerous place for women and minorities.

Shayna Strom has written a long report for the Century Foundation looking at how various groups that do community or member organizing are striving to find new ways to fund their efforts. Among the more innovative strategies she highlights: the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s Fair Care Labs, which is developing a tool, currently in beta, to allow employers to fund benefits for domestic workers; and Coworker.org, which is considering packaging insights about workplace problems into data it can sell to socially responsible investors.

Overseas news: Iceland’s Pirate Party came in third in Saturday’s general election, gaining 10 seats (triple its previous holding), putting it in a position to compete with the incumbent Independence Party for the ability to form the next governing coalition, Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura reports for the New York Times. The Pirates have pledged to enact the crowd-sourced constitution that was drafted by the public but blocked by Parliament in 2013 and have offered Edward Snowden asylum.

Your moment of zen: How we “rigged” elections in 2004.