FC: North Carolina cops may have lied, posed as FBI cybercrime agents

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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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

Please remove my e-mail address if you post this, thanks.


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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