IP: Feds mull national warrants for Net crime

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brett Glass" <brett () lariat org>
To: "Dave Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2000 5:05 PM
Subject: For IP: Feds mull national warrants for Net crime


> Feds mull national warrants for Net crime
>
> By Mark Wigfield, WSJ Interactive Edition
> March 9, 2000 8:07 AM PT
> URL: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2458224,00.html
>
> WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Justice Department may seek authority to obtain
> national warrants that could be used to investigate crimes on the
Internet.
> At the same time, the department may also seek expanded protection from
law
> enforcement for e-mail, making it comparable to the protections against
> telephone wiretaps, Assistant Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate
> Commerce Committee panel Wednesday.
>
> [...]
>
> --------
>
> My comments:
>
> The US Constitution, Amendment IV, reads:
>
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
> effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated,
> and no warrants shall issue, but upon
> probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly
> describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized.
> How would one "particularly describe" the place to be searched via a
> national warrant? I suppose that one could say that the place to be
> searched was "Cyberspace." This would be equivalent to specifying "the
> United States" as the location of the search -- except, of course, that
> Cyberspace is bigger.
>
> The DoJ and FBI often seem to consider the US Constitution to be nothing
> more than an inconvenient obstacle to their otherwise unrestrained power.
> So I'm sure that they wouldn't feel that something so trivial as a
> 200-year-old piece of parchment would be any impediment. ;-)
>
> --Brett Glass