Is “Probable Cause” Dead?
Several recent stories caught my attention as to why requiring a real “probable cause” to get a search warrant is a good idea, even if law enforcement thinks it’s just an evil plot to make their job harder.
A Boston College computer science major recently had his computer, disk drives, flash drives, iPod, cell phone, and Ubuntu Linux CD impounded by college police investigating whether he might have been the person who sent an email to a college email list claiming that another student is gay. This seizure happened on March 30, and as of now he still does not have his possessions back. First of all, why are the police involved at all? At worst, this is a civil case involving some sort of defamation law. It is not a criminal case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is assisting the “perp” in getting the ridiculous warrant quashed. The student is suspected of criminal activity because he, among other normal activities for a computer science major, often tested and repaired computers for fellow students, and used Linux as well as the “official” operating system at Boston College. I guess I need to stop fixing computers for family and friends and using Linux in some virtual machines before my computers get seized because the police and judiciary are so ignorant that they take the word of a disgruntled jerk as “probable cause”.
An even more serious matter (because this one is by design and not just incompetence) is the report by the New York Times April 16 that the NSA has routinely exceed even the ridiculously loose limits set by the Patroit Act and the FISA bill of 2008 in wiretapping Americans talking to Americans without a warrant or even any real suspicion of terrorist activity. At some point in 2005 or 2006, they apparently came very close to wiretapping a member of Congress on an overseas trip.
We may have passed the year 1984, but George Orwell’s nightmare society where you are always under observation and the word of a neighbor is all it takes for law enforcement to totally disrupt your life is not as farfetched as we would like to believe.
