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FBI Seizes Library Computers Without Warrant
An anonymous reader writes "Two FBI agents walked into a public library in Maryland, without a warrant, and walked out with two computers. The library director agreed to release the machines to these smooth-talking feds. According to the article, the director of Frederick County Public Libraries indicated that this was the third time in his 10 years there that the FBI had requested records, but the first time they had come without a court order. The director seemed to indicate no regrets, stating 'It was a decision I made on my experience and the information given to me.' He further justified his actions, noting that the agents indicated specific computers they needed (of the several dozen in the library) and further that they 'had an awful lot of information.'" The library director speculated whether the raid may have involved the Bruce Ivins / anthrax case, musing "Obviously it coincided with the events everyone is talking about," but he said the agents hadn't mentioned it.
I am far from a libertarian extremist, and this does not fly with me.
The whole reason that we have *court-ordered* warrants, elected judges, and oversight and accountability is to prevent this -- namely the seizing of records / assets without any oversight.
I am happy when even television shows get it right (Law and Order occasionally), and when the cops / feds do stuff like this, it comes back to jeopardize their case. Illegally seized? Now watch as you just compromised yourself and potentially let somebody go free. Before somebody retorts with the obvious extremes, of course I do think that ridiculous cases of this are ludicrous (e.g. cop didn't sign one piece of paper correctly -> murder goes free), but the case above is clear violation of due procedure and oversight in my books.
The one justification I could see is in truly emergent cases -- e.g. hard drive will purge, but need to preserve data... must... pull... plug... NOW. I would say "do it," and, according to my lawyer friends, there are judges on call that the cop / detective / agent can call that can grant emergency access / warrants shortly after the fact (within hours) to make everything legitimate. It does not appear that this was done here.
I don't want some librarian making the decision on whether to give up these publicly financed assets for snooping by any authority. Any smooth-talking agent can come in, reciting that it is for "terrorism / anthrax" or "the children / child porn" and the intimidated lady will just cave in. I know my friend's 60 year old mother who works as our local librarian would. She is neither lawyer nor judge, and should not function as such.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
If they had an "awful lot of information.." then they could have gotten a damn court order. When you just roll over and accept totalitarianism, don't complain when they come for you next, with nothing more than "an awful lot of information..."
This country and its people are a disgrace.
They could be fake agents, who know an awful lot of information BECAUSE they are the criminals.
This way without a court order, they can simply clean up after themselves.
Nice.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Cops don't need a warrant to search a private citizen who gives their permission. But of course that citizen has to know they have the right to refuse, and then they have to have the guts to use that right. The Constitution doesn't emit alarm bells from its Smithsonian alcove whenever a government worker violates it.
That library director isn't acting as a private citizen. They're acting as the custodian of that equipment, working for the public. People have an expectation of some privacy when using library records. Courts held for generations that library records, though recorded and kept by a public institution, require due process - like a warrant or court order, based on evidence and probable cause - until Bush's Republican Era started relegislating those rights protections away with Patriot Acts and their ilk.
If those government employees colluded to expose private records without a warrant, whether through "incompetence" or disdain for their obligations (or, as has been the fad this decade, through both), then the evidence they seized is worthless. Yet another terrorism investigation blown by Bush's agencies ignoring the most basic and trivial due process.
Feel safer?
--
make install -not war
Maybe I'm a closet fascist, but I don't see the act of asking for something from the owner and being given permission to take it as 'seizure'.
I love free hardware.
I vote for more librarians like this guy!
If the cops come to your house, ask for your laptop and you say "Here you go!" that's fine, but this was a public library. I would argue that the librarian was far from the owner of the computer and he certainly wasn't the user of it. It's not the computer itself that I worry about, it's the information on it - what it was and what it's going to be used for.
It should read "FBI steals library computers..."
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
No government official should have the discretion to unilaterally allow the removal of citizen owned assets without a warrant. The government is a property manager for the citizen's assets.
Exactly, and no reasonable court would allow a warrant unless they had definite probable cause to search. The government can't just search records for people they "think" might be breaking laws. That's very specific. Now, if they found a library book dropped at the scene of a murder, I would say they have probable cause to see who checked out book, because you might find the murderer. But getting information on a crime that hasn't happened "yet" is illegal. I could go and read books on making bombs just out of interest in high energy chemical reactions and not be a terrorist. But they could spend thousands of taxpayer dollars investigating every aspect of my life just to make sure I'm not a terrorist. That's the slippery slope. It's about MONEY more than FREEDOM.
This massive expansion of "homeland security" is wasteful of tax dollars because they are investigating thousands of people who haven't done anything. Not to mention building dossiers which I'm sure could be used for political means. But it's wasteful when they could be out solving other crimes that have happened. It's amazing that there's so little crime nowadays that they spend this much time trying to prevent things from happening. And the massive amount of money they are spending is not making people feel safer (the real goal). So lets reverse this and take a step back:
All of these policies were put in place during a frantic time when no one knew what was going to happen. Decisions made in a panic are often not the right ones. We need to review ALL of the policies made during the years of 2001-2005 (even if it takes years to review) and decide what we need to keep. There needs to be a massive PUBLIC effort to review the policies and decisions that were made, now that we "have time". And we need to cut costs where we can, because this stuff is extremely expensive and they can't just have a blank check out of fear anymore. If you added up the cost of 9/11, just in terms of government expansion, it's probably well over a trillion. And for what? You can't save people--we're all going to die anyway. The real idea is to maintain American (and global) confidence in the American economy, which is ALL THAT MATTERS if we are here for our purpose--to support future generations. But I question whether these current wasteful policies have really increased confidence all that much! If anything, they have hurt our confidence even more, because they have been wasting so much money on no-bid contracts and just JUNK like these pointless "preemptive" investigations.
If there's evidence of a crime, a court will issue a warrant. If there isn't, they cannot seize the data, because there's no warrant. That's why there are warrants and that's the law and that's IT. There are good reasons for these laws and this will get struck down when the ACLU goes after those agents and their boss.
Again, we need to review ALL the policy decisions made during this time period again with clear heads. Otherwise, we may do our children great injustice.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
FBI Agent 1: We need two more computers for Dave and Terry.
FBI Agent 2: It's cool let's just grab it from the local library.
What makes it illegal for the FBI to request and be given the computers?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
The library's procedure for such requests usually requires a court order, however after the agent described the case and the situation, he was persuaded to give them access, Batson said.
No, no... They can just ask. It is not illegal to ask and be granted. (It probably should be but it isn't.) The librarian violated no laws. The F.B.I. agents violated no laws. The /. article is misleading intentionally I'm sure so as to drum up interest but there are no legal violations nor due process violations here.
The question is ethics, "Should the librarian have done this without requiring a warrant regardless of the impressions that they had?" In that case I say epic fail. They should not have done so.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nah, this is not so. The Librarian should not have complied with the "request" and if anyone ever is charged for something and the evidence or later evidence is based on the data on the computers, the defendant(s) in the case can get any such evidence thrown out based on the doctrine of fruit from the poisonous tree. Basically, the government agents knew or should have known the person granting the search/seizure without a warrant being presented did not have the authority to do so. And, no, the librarian does not have the authority without warrant to reveal to the government officer the records of your library activities, which is what the data on the computer, in part, is. A warrant, trivial to obtain, is a necessary part of the equation. A person who used one of the seized computers could probably bring a successful 1983 action against the agents for their blatant disregard of the law in this case. It certainly does not make us safer when they choose to do things the wrong way, particularly when the right way is so very, very easy.
captcha: justice (!) :)
Hi Doc. I'm currently re-reading Machiavelli's The Prince, and came across an interesting passage which might help to illuminate the current administration's behavior.
"When there are no external enemies, create one, to unite the people and quell unrest."
It's from memory so may not be an exact quote, but the sentiment is uncannily close to what we've been doing since Sept. 10, 2001.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
So the librarian has no regrets for tossing out the 4th amendment.
Sure its a public facility, but you would think that a librarian would be a bit more concerned about protecting freedoms.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Let's kill off some more of the Republican lies you heard on Rush Limbo's show, because they're so easy
Oh, by telling all the lies that you read on moveon.org or dailykos? Oh dear, we could be a long time going back and forth!
As for Waco, the ATF (not the FBI) managed to kill a bunch of religious fanatics who were armed to the teeth and committed to killing and dying for their "messiah".
Ok, so, its ok for Democratic Presidents to kill a bunch of religious fanatics committed to killing and dying for their messiah, even though they are US Citizens, without a trial. But, if Bush holds military tribunals for people at Gitmo and feeds them 3 squares a day, that's unconstitutional. Like I said, its ok for you to bend the constitution to suit your own prejudices, just not anyone else. Thus, the essence of all your claims about the "evil" of Bush are really more about "we're not the ones in power", because, when you are in power, you do the same damned thing.
But Bush's US Attorney purge is unprecedented: he fired a whole load of them because they weren't pursuing political witchhunts hard enough during an election year.
Ah, but you see, the people that Clinton fired WERE persuing investigations into a number of inconvenient things for Clinton. HE fired them to all to provide cover for themselves. And indeed, you have never explained the mass firings of the White House Travel Office.
You Republicans have destroyed everything you've touched
Hardly. Actually, if you are a farmer, an oil worker, a coal miner, a gold miner, you are doing quite well in the Bush economy. In fact, I'm glad to see that the emphasis of the Democratic economy is in fact to bemoan that all of your rich buddies on Wall Street didn't get their bonuses in New York.
And, if you look at the world, when the world was trying out your stupid socialist progressivism, China and India and Asia starved. Now that Republican free trade and capitalism has spread, the standard of living has gone so much that you Democrats now argue that, we have to adopt socialism because people have -too much- (as in, not poor anymore), and its bad for the planet.
You can say we hate America, but its really you guys that do. You talk about the working man, but, you ram through legislation to slow down the development of every commercial good there is in the interests of saving the planet or supposed safety. The fact of the matter is simple, and I'm not a big union guy, but, I will give you three basic lessons:
1. YOU CAN'T UNIONIZE A FOREST DUDE.
2. YOU CAN'T BE FREE IF YOU DO NOT HAVE MONEY.
3. THE CLINTON SERVICE ECONOMY WAS BULLSHIT.
The fact of the matter is, under Bush, manufacturing has gone UP, whereas under Clinton, it went down. Under Bush, exports are now driving economic growth in the country, whereas, under Clinton, it was a bunch of computer programmers getting IPOs for a bunch of stupid software that didn't work.
The real wealth of a nation is in taking natural resources, and converting them into consumer goods. The less you do of that, the less wealthy you are, and, so, every time you adopt a government policy to slow that conversion down, you impoverish people.
Telling people that we can somehow be richer by having less, is a lie, and, blaming your failures on people that have been able to navigate their way through your sick web of losers and thieves to actually achieve something is just wrong.
Americans are tired of your lies, your incompetence, your hating America.
Yeah right. Barrack Obama has yet to cross 50% likely voter, and he's only up in states that have a lot of black people. His strategy is simple and it worked for him now, but it won't work in the general election. He basically tries to get all the blacks to vote for him, then the liberals, and that's his coalition. He was able to win in Illinois and the Democratic Primary doing that, but all he's really done is rebuilt what Mike Dukakis did at the national l
This is my sig.
Read past the demagoguery of the Slashdot title:
The librarian willing GAVE the computers - they didn't have to.
But, the funny thing is that your statement, as fully quoted, is actually saying that the librarian, that is, an institution or business, shouldn't be able to cooperate with an investigation unless there is a 'search warrant'. Taken literally that would mean we should be run by a judicial oligarchy. Meaning: that unless a judge said so, I, as a business owner, couldn't cooperate with an investigation - I guess you're saying because I wouldn't know, myself, whether I should cooperate with them or not.
I know your argument only extended to a 'public' librarian, but they have to go by policies of their own. If that policy allows such cooperation then a judge isn't needed. After all, the director was hired with not only the capacity to make these decisions but with the authority as well.
What's really grievous that you think only a judge has a right to tell someone whether they can or cannot cooperate with any kind of investigation unless they give their intellectual blessing. It's not only what you stated but what you later explained.
But, the funny thing is that your statement, as fully quoted, is actually saying that the librarian, that is, an institution or business, shouldn't be able to cooperate with an investigation unless there is a 'search warrant'.
I don't think I was clear here. I meant that they can voluntarily cooperate to an extent, but they shouldn't be allowed to release information that has an expectation of privacy like customer information or web browser logs without a warrant or subpoena.
What's really grievous that you think only a judge has a right to tell someone whether they can or cannot cooperate with any kind of investigation unless they give their intellectual blessing. It's not only what you stated but what you later explained.
There are already plenty of cases where that is the case. For example, releasing medical records and client confidentiality.