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The Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission has introduced fourth amendments to the regulations governing net metering for rooftop solar PV systems. These amendments are aimed at updating and enhancing the existing framework, ensuring better integration and management of solar power within the states electricity grid.

The distribution licensees are now required to update the available capacity of distribution transformers annually. This information is to be provided to the Commission to facilitate the installation of rooftop solar PV systems under the net metering arrangement. For installations up to 6 kW, any necessary strengthening of the distribution infrastructure, including transformers, will be covered under the Annual Revenue Requirement of the Distribution Licensee. For installations exceeding 6 kW, the system strengthening charges will be borne by the applicant based on specific guidelines.

For low-tension consumers installing rooftop solar PV systems above 6 kW and up to 100 kW, the charges for system strengthening will be based on a per kW basis, as approved by the Commission. This applies to both state-owned distribution companies and other licensees. Similarly, for high-tension consumers installing systems above 6 kW and up to 1,000 kW, the charges will be calculated on a per KVA basis. If there is a need for infrastructure upgrades, the costs will be borne by the consumer.

The regulations stipulate that the minimum capacity for any rooftop solar PV system should be at least one kilowatt. Various activities and approvals are required for the installation of these systems, each with a prescribed timeline to ensure timely completion. These activities include registration, approval of diagrams by the Chief Electrical Inspector, submission of applications to the distribution licensee, and obtaining a technical feasibility report.

Once the technical feasibility report is received, the distribution licensee will issue an in-principle consent for connectivity, along with the necessary charges and agreements. If system strengthening is required, the distribution licensee will provide an estimate, and the applicant must pay the connectivity charges and execute the agreement within 30 days. The project must be completed within six months from the date of the agreement.

After the project work is completed, the applicant must submit various documents, including ownership proof, installation approval, and compliance certificates. The distribution licensee will then install the necessary meters and intimate the field office for further action. If the applicant fails to complete the work or submit the required documents within the specified time, the application will be canceled, and any charges paid will be forfeited.

The amendments also emphasize the importance of adhering to the prescribed timelines for each activity, ensuring that all entities involved in the rooftop solar PV project carry out their responsibilities efficiently. This streamlined process aims to facilitate the growth of solar power in Gujarat, promoting sustainable energy solutions and reducing the states carbon footprint.

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Gujarat's Proposes Fourth Amendment To Net Metering Regulations For Rooftop Solar Systems Up To 100 KW - SolarQuarter

Police can traipse onto the vast majority of private property in the country without a warrant thanks to a century-old Supreme Court decision, according to a new study by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public-interest law firm.

In a study published in the spring 2024 issue of Regulation, a publication of the Cato Institute, Institute for Justice attorney Josh Windham and research analyst David Warren estimate that at least 96 percent of all private land in the country is excluded from Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement under the "open-fields doctrine," which allows police to forego warrants when they searched fields, woods, vacant lots, and other property not near a dwelling.

That adds up to nearly 1.2 billion acres open to government trespass, and the Institute for Justice says that's a conservative estimate. The organization also says the study is the first attempt to quantify how much private property is affected by the Supreme Court's 1924 ruling in Hester v. U.S., which created the doctrine.

"Now we have hard data showing that the Supreme Court's century-old error blew a massive hole in Americans' property and privacy rights," Windham said in a press release. "Now we know what the open fields doctrine really means: Government officials can treat almost all private land in this country like public property."

Windham added that "courts and lawmakers across the country will have to face the consequences of keeping this doctrine on the books."

As Reason's Joe Lancaster has reported, the Institute for Justice is challenging warrantless searches of private property in several states. Last week, it filed a lawsuit on behalf of Tom Manuel, a Louisiana outdoorsman who hunts on a private parcel of undeveloped land that he owns. Despite fences and "No Trespassing" signs, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries agents came onto his property twice last December without a warrant to check his hunting license.

In December 2021, two Pennsylvania hunting clubs represented by the Institute for Justice sued the Pennsylvania Game Commission for setting up trail cameras on their property without their knowledge or permission. The organization filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of Tennessee residents who had trail cameras installed on their property without a warrant.

In one of the more bizarre cases of the open-fields doctrine run amok, a Connecticut couple filed a lawsuit challenging warrantless surveillance after state wildlife officials put a camera on a bear that was known to frequent the private nature reserve they run, turning the animal into a roving police drone.

This is all possible because the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement only extends to the curtilagethe immediate surroundings of a house. "The special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their 'persons, houses, papers and effects,' is not extended to the open fields," Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in Hester. "The distinction between the latter and the house is as old as the common law."

In 1984 the Supreme Court reaffirmed that decision, ruling in Ray E. Oliver v. U.S. that even the presence of fences and "No Trespassing" signs did not establish a legitimate privacy interest in unoccupied land.

However, the Institute for Justice has argued that Holmes' appeal to the common law is based on a misreadinga misreading that implicates a massive amount of Americans' private property.

The rest is here:
Nearly 96% of Private Property Is Open to Warrantless Searches, New Study Estimates - Reason

While law enforcement officers in California have the right to pull you over with reasonable cause, what does California law say about your rights during a traffic stop?

Reader Clifford Ephraim asked The Sacramento Bees service journalism team, which focuses on helping the community navigate daily life: What are your rights when officers pull you over while driving?

If a California law enforcement official flashes their emergency lights behind you, here are some of your rights and questions you can expect from an officer:

Officer Cody Tapley of the Sacramento Police Department said the Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches by government officials.

A traffic stop would be considered a seizure under the Fourth Amendment, Tapley said. Officers need to have reasonable suspicion or probable cause for effecting a stop.

When a law enforcement officer stop you, Tapley said you are not free to leave until the traffic stop has been completed and the officer releases you.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union website, drivers have the right to:

Remain silent, but must let the officer know if they wish to exercise that right.

Refuse to consent to a search of themselves or their car.

Their constitutional rights regardless of their citizenship status.

While every traffic stop can be different, Tapley said officers will typically ask for your drivers license, vehicle registration and proof of insurance.

According to the California Vehicle Code, drivers must be able to provide all those documents during a traffic stop.

Officers may ask you additional questions surrounding the nature of the stop, Tapley said. Traffic stops are far from routine and every single stop is different so there is no one size fits all.

When a law enforcement officer pulls you over while driving, Tapley said you should and shouldnt do the following:

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Do

Activate your turn signal or hazards and pull off or to the side of the roadway as soon as it is safe to do so.

Turn off the engine and turn off any audio devices.

Stay in your vehicle unless directed by the officer to exit.

Turn on your interior lights if you are pulled over at night to assist with visibility.

Keep your hands on the steering wheel or in a visible location.

Follow the officers instructions for you or your passengers.

Lower the corresponding window the officer approaches.

Let the officer know if you have a weapon in the vehicle upon the their arrival to your window.

Wait for the officers instructions before reaching for your license or documents.

Dont

Stop abruptly in traffic or pull over without signaling.

Get out of the car unless the officer tells you to.

Lie or give false information.

Law enforcement officers must have a search warrant before they can search you or your phone.

However, there are a few circumstances when a officer can search your phone without a warrant, according to the Supreme Court of California.

These circumstances, or exigent circumstances, include when officers have to prevent possible danger to someone, prevent the destruction of evidence in a crime, or during the escape of a fleeing suspect.

Law enforcement officers can also search your phone with your consent.

What do you want to know about life in Sacramento? Ask our service journalism team your top-of-mind questions in the module below or email servicejournalists@sacbee.com.

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Heres what to do (and not do) if you get pulled over in California. What are my rights? - Yahoo Movies Canada

Following a raid in March 2021, federal agents spent days rifling through the personal belongings stored in nearly 1,400 safe deposit boxes seized from a vault in Beverly Hills, California.

The agents were tasked with cataloging the contents of the boxes, but they also seized piles of valuablesgold coins, luxury watches, family heirlooms, and stacks of cashfrom people who had not been charged with any crimes.

And they did that despite being told, by the warrant authorizing the raid, that the contents of the safe deposit boxes were off-limits.

On Thursday, a panel of federal judges at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will be asked whether the FBI's brazen smash-and-grab scheme that netted more than $86 million in forfeited cash and property violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the raid's innocent victims.

"The fundamental principle at stake is that if the government wants to search and seize your property, it has to have some reason to think you did something wrong," Rob Johnson, an attorney with the Institute for Justice (IJ) and one of the lawyers who will argue the case before the circuit court on Thursday, wrote this week on Twitter. "The FBI came up with a blatant scheme to circumvent that fundamental principle, and, so far, no court has held them to account."

When the case went before a lower court last year, federal Judge Gary Klausner ruled that the FBI's inventory of the seized safe deposit boxes was legal, despite acknowledging that attorneys for the plaintiffs "have certainly shown that the government had a dual motive in inventorying the contents of each deposit box."

There's ample evidence showing that the FBI's "dual motive" was part of the scheme from the beginning. As Reasonhaspreviously detailed, the warrant for the raid explicitly forbade law enforcement from seizing or searching the private property contained in the safe deposit boxes held at U.S. Private Vaults, which was the target of the FBI's investigation. During depositions, FBI agents admitted that they planned to forfeit cash and other valuables from the boxes, even though theydid not include those plansin the warrant application.

The U.S. attorney's office tried to block the disclosure of those depositions and other court documents that "laid bare the government's deception," the Los Angeles Timesreported last year.

In the affidavit requesting a warrant to go after U.S. Private Vaultswhose owners were charged with several federal crimes after the raidAssistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Brown wrote that federal agents intended to merely inventory the contents of the seized safe deposit boxes. But court documents later showed that the FBI had drawn up plans months earlier to forfeit property from the boxes and failed to inform the magistrate judge about those plans. (Disclosure: Reasonsubmitted anamicusbrief in the case arguing that the redacted documents should be made public.)

Some forfeited property has been returned to the innocent victims of the raid, but only after they submitted to an FBI investigation or launched legal challenges seeking to recover what was taken. Many others have been unable to reclaim what they own. The class action lawsuit that goes before the 9th Circuit on Thursday is not narrowly focused on the return of forfeited property but on the underlying constitutional principles that the FBI seems to have disregarded as it planned and executed the raid.

The FBI has maintained that it did not mislead the judge who issued the warrant or overstep the limits of the warrant.

In ruling for the FBI last year, Klausner said the attorneys representing the raid's victims must "demonstrate that the improper investigatory motive was the onlyreason that the government opened the safe deposit boxes, and they have not done so."

If the Ninth Circuit applies that same reasoning after it hears the case this week, it would deal a serious blow to the Fourth Amendment's privacy protections in other contexts. In effect, that would say that as long as law enforcement has at least one legitimate reason for cracking open the safe deposit boxes, agents of the state are free to engage in all manner of rights violations without the targets having any legal recourse. It would be equivalent to saying that if the owner of a parking garage is suspected of a crime, all the cars (and the contents of those cars) stored there could be forfeited by the government.

"If the FBI can get away with this here, it's a green light for the government to try the same ruse again throughout the country," warns Johnson. "And it's not just safe deposit boxes. The government could pull the same trick with storage lockers, hotels, even apartment buildings."

Read more:
FBI Seized $86 Million From People Not Suspected Crimes. A Federal Court Will Decide if That's Legal. - Reason

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has become the court of the digital age, routinely applying the Constitution to cases involving First and Fourth amendment rights in internet disputes.

The high court has heard cases dealing with free speech on social media platforms and protections for Big Tech under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields companies from lawsuits over content posted on their platforms by third parties.

The court also has tackled GPS concerns in a case involving law enforcements use of third-party tracking data without a warrant, ruling that it runs afoul of a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.

The Roberts court, I think, has shown a comfort with adopting the constitutional protections as understood for decades if not centuries for the digital era, said Chris Marchese, litigation center director at NetChoice. His organization, NetChoice, has two cases pending this year before the high court involving social media laws.

NetChoice has cited First Amendment guarantees in challenging laws in Texas and Florida that have limited the ability of large social media companies like X, Tik Tok and Facebook to moderate speech on their platforms.

Texas enacted a law in 2021 prohibiting social media companies from removing and moderating content that some might find offensive or hateful. It also required the companies to disclose certain business practices, such as the use of algorithms.

A federal court in Texas blocked parts of the law from taking effect. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, but the injunction has remained in place pending appeal.

Florida in 2021 enacted a law that imposed a fine of $25,000 to $250,000 per day on large social media companies that deplatform political candidates.

The high court has established a firm stance on First Amendment protections online in recent years.

In 2017, the justices unanimously struck down a North Carolina law that banned registered sex offenders from accessing certain websites where minors would have accounts, regardless of whether the offender contacted a minor. The justices reasoned the restriction ran afoul of the sex offenders First Amendment rights, saying the restriction was too broad and impeded on their use of the internet.

In 2021, the high court sided with a high school junior varsity cheerleader in a free speech dispute after she posted curse words on her social media account about not making the varsity team. Her school had suspended her from cheerleading for a year, but the justices said that was unreasonable since her off-campus speech didnt create a disruption in the classroom.

Earlier this year, the court ruled in a case involving a Colorado man who had been convicted of harassing and stalking a musician via social media messages. He argued that the charges ran afoul of his First Amendment rights, and the high court considered if his messages could be deemed true threats. A true threat leads an individual to believe they will actually be harmed and is not given First Amendment protections.

The majority sided with the man and remanded his case to lower courts for further evaluation of the level of intent needed to determine whether a message is a true threat and, thus, not subject to free speech protections.

Its not just individuals who have had digital era wins before the justices: Companies such as YouTube and Google have also secured court victories.

Big Tech has been given significant protections from legal liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which prevents the social media companies from facing lawsuits over content that is posted on their platforms by third parties.

This legal shield was tested last term in a pair of cases in which families of victims of terrorist attacks sued several tech giants arguing they aided and abetted terrorist organizations by allowing them to post graphic content and recruit on their sites.

The justices ruled against the families, saying that any entity or individual must have culpability in participating in a specific attack in order to violate federal anti-terrorism laws

The high court also batted down law enforcements attempts to skirt warrant requirements in using third-party tracking data in a 2018 Fourth Amendment dispute involving a man who was convicted of robbing a series of banks after law enforcement tracked his locations via data from his cellphone company.

The justices reasoned there is a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment even when it comes to cellphone sites and law enforcement must obtain a warrant to obtain tracking location information.

David Greene, civil liabilities director and attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the Roberts court could potentially rewrite or change social media law regardless of the justices motivation.

This is where a lot of litigation is happening now at the intersection of technology and law, Mr. Greene said. Its really hard to have First Amendment issues that arent dealing with some sort of tech facilitated communications, so I credit them for doing it. I dont know whether it is something they are doing intentionally or whether it is just a reflection of what is just happening in the courts more broadly.

Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, said major tech companies keep being brought into litigation because they have significant market power.

In recent years, the court has had a heavy share of social media cases and I think a lot of it turns on this idea of what exactly is this idea of social media are these sort of startup tech companies that should be given latitude, are these important market players who exercise significant power over our discourse or are these even perhaps even almost like utilities, Mr. Blackman said.

At least one member of the high court has recognized they arent necessarily the most tech-savvy crew, despite taking up conflicts centered on the internet. The youngest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, is 51.

Were a court, Justice Elena Kagan said during one of the terrorist victims versus Big Tech cases last term. We really dont know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet.

Mr. Marchese, though, said the justices ages dont matter as they can rely on amicus briefs from tech experts when applying legal reasoning to internet battles, and its important for rulings to be shaped by the law instead of technology.

All of the justices have had extensive careers in the law before they joined the bench, he said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified David Greenes position at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Digital justice: Supreme Court increasingly confronts law and the internet - Washington Times