As everyone has seen by now, Poindexter has been placed in charge of a massive U.S. Government project that screens every word put on the Internet or E-mail. State and local Law enforcement also want in on the action too. This past week a sixth Grader who was blogging her personal diary was raided and interogated.
Edit: People had a problem with the Title of the thread, if you can come up with a better Title, post it.
In either case it is another Gross example of the Law system run amok especially with regards to Computers and Internet technology.
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North Carolina cops may have lied, posed as FBI cybercrime agents
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 14:20:03 -0400
From: Ben Brunk
To: declan@well.com
Subject: I think this will interest many politech readers
Chapel Hill High School student's blog becomes subject of "FBI" investigation
http://indyweek.com/durham/current/triangles.html
http://www.upsaid.com/erinrocksout/index.php
http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/2579239p-2393565c.html
Ms. Carter should know that anything she puts up on a website is accessible
to everyone in the world. Ignoring the fact that she suffers the
consequences for choosing to publish her diary to the world and thus not
protect her own privacy, what I find troubling about this story is that
local police are identifying themselves as federal agents merely because
they've been recruited into a federal cybercrime task force. This news
conforms with many other accounts of the disastrous results associated with
the federalization of police forces around the country. We have substance
prohibition to thank for this.
The chilling of free speech is always a reason for concern. As with TIA,
cyercrime investigators have a high probability of targeting the innocent
simply due to the fact that there are only a tiny handful of miscreants in
the world. It is hypocritical (but not very surprising) for a town that is
such a celebrated bastion of liberalism to be involved in questionable
federal programs that lead to problems for its citizens. If they are sworn
local police officers, they are bound by North Carolina laws, as well as
the state and US Constitutions, both of which prohibit secret searches.
That piece of garbage called the PATRIOT Act does not preempt the Bill or
Rights, and police shouldn't pretend that it does. Also, it is no trivial
matter that local police are enforcing federal laws. There was already a
US Supreme Court decision with regards to the Brady Act (gun background
checks), that determined that local police cannot (voluntarily or not)
enforce federal laws without compensation. There are probably more
relevant decisions that I am unaware of. I'm sure in this case there is
some convoluted legal veneer of justification for it all, but that isn't
going to be much comfort if more and more outrageous incidents take place.
If local police are unaccountable to local leaders and the citizens they
SERVE, what have we got?
Ben Brunk, PhD
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Edit: People had a problem with the Title of the thread, if you can come up with a better Title, post it.
In either case it is another Gross example of the Law system run amok especially with regards to Computers and Internet technology.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
North Carolina cops may have lied, posed as FBI cybercrime agents
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 14:20:03 -0400
From: Ben Brunk
To: declan@well.com
Subject: I think this will interest many politech readers
Chapel Hill High School student's blog becomes subject of "FBI" investigation
http://indyweek.com/durham/current/triangles.html
http://www.upsaid.com/erinrocksout/index.php
http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/2579239p-2393565c.html
Ms. Carter should know that anything she puts up on a website is accessible
to everyone in the world. Ignoring the fact that she suffers the
consequences for choosing to publish her diary to the world and thus not
protect her own privacy, what I find troubling about this story is that
local police are identifying themselves as federal agents merely because
they've been recruited into a federal cybercrime task force. This news
conforms with many other accounts of the disastrous results associated with
the federalization of police forces around the country. We have substance
prohibition to thank for this.
The chilling of free speech is always a reason for concern. As with TIA,
cyercrime investigators have a high probability of targeting the innocent
simply due to the fact that there are only a tiny handful of miscreants in
the world. It is hypocritical (but not very surprising) for a town that is
such a celebrated bastion of liberalism to be involved in questionable
federal programs that lead to problems for its citizens. If they are sworn
local police officers, they are bound by North Carolina laws, as well as
the state and US Constitutions, both of which prohibit secret searches.
That piece of garbage called the PATRIOT Act does not preempt the Bill or
Rights, and police shouldn't pretend that it does. Also, it is no trivial
matter that local police are enforcing federal laws. There was already a
US Supreme Court decision with regards to the Brady Act (gun background
checks), that determined that local police cannot (voluntarily or not)
enforce federal laws without compensation. There are probably more
relevant decisions that I am unaware of. I'm sure in this case there is
some convoluted legal veneer of justification for it all, but that isn't
going to be much comfort if more and more outrageous incidents take place.
If local police are unaccountable to local leaders and the citizens they
SERVE, what have we got?
Ben Brunk, PhD
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
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