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In Brazil, Police Overstep Court Order To Sieze Former President's Email
New submitter MythicalMan writes: During the search and seizure in the Lula Institute last Friday, [Brazil's] Federal Police threatened a computer technician with being taken under arrest, forcing him to give the administrator password of all email accounts @institutolula.org (hosted at Google). Such generic access was not granted by the court's mandate, which referred only to a few specific email accounts. See the information here (in Portuguese). The fact is worrying not only because of its illegality but also for its possible international repercussions, since Lula Institute corresponds with institutions, public figures and heads of state all around the world. Investigations of corruption in Brazil have been characterized by frequent leaks to the press and to opposition politicians who use them to attack the government of President Dilma Rousseff. The methods used by Brazilian prosecutors have been questioned not only by government supporters, but also by jurists, scholars and journalists.
The article, written and hosted by instituto lula itself, should be taken with a grain of salt The institute is already under investigation because of massive cases corruption.
Also, someone leaked that the police would be seizing the institute, and they emptied it from most of its documents. Its like watergate in here, and the judge presiding the investigation has a lot of popular support because he is finally going for people which seemed to be untouchable in the past.
Yes, this sounds like the police were worried that the sys admin was going to delete the server or something so they just demanded the admin passwords. Sure that would give them access to all the accounts, but it seems reasonable if there was a reasonable fear that the admin wasn't going to comply with the order. Yes the police should only look at the accounts that the courts ordered them to.
Now it looks like Slashdot has been used to spin coverage towards some false privacy debate when this is about corruption.