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FBI Keeps Seized Computers up to Five Years
Zorro turned us on to an NYT article that says law enforcement agencies routinely seize hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computers and hard drives as evidence, but have so few computer experts that confiscated equipment can gather dust for months or years until someone decides whether or not they contain criminal information. The story also says that, even if you're innocent, once the cops grab your computer they can keep it until the statute of limitations on the alleged crime runs out, which is typically five years. (Free NYT reg. required to read.)
Any responsible accounting for confiscated equipment would show that returning a modern computer five years later would represent a loss of the majority of value. Is there a constitutional loophole for this or is it simply another violation of the takings clause of the fifth admendment?
At least in the cases where charges are dropped or the defendant is acquitted, shouldn't compensation for taken property be required?
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I thought that maybe a real-world testimonial from a slashdot'er might be of use here.
...they took the computer which was attached to a cable run 25 feet out of his room. A quiet computer with no monitor sitting in a closet.
I went to college at the University of College Park, MD. I lived on campus, which meant that everyone in my on-campus apartment had a 10baseT jack fed to a T3 line on the Internet backbone. Good deal.
I had two computers, a Pentium-60 running FreeBSD with no monitor (fixed-ip permanent uptime server) and a dual-boot redhat/windows box in my bedroom. My on campus-apartment housed four people.
One semester a new guy moved into our apartment. I don't want to make this post run on forever with details, so to make a long story short: we discovered that he was hosting approx. 6gig of pictures of very young children having sex on his computer through a password protected ftp server. We freaked. We called the police.
I think it was the right thing to do.
The police came. Lots of them. They had a search warrant. They took everything electronic in this kid's room. They took his alarm clock.
My computer.
When they were taking it I told the officers: "you'll need the passwords, it's running an IDEA encrypted filesystem" and wrote the root pwd and filesystem key on a 3m note. I didn't care, the crypto was for fun, my box was legal. I remember what the officer said:
"I'm pretty sure they can figure it out".
As if.
I got my computer back 32 months later. I kept in touch with the college park police department. They just said it was at the state computer crime facility awaiting testing.
I don't have to tell you what a P60 is worth today. I still use it as a server, but I lost upwards of two years of use on that box.
I don't mind law enforcement taking computers in some cases. I think my case was a good example of better-safe-than-sorry. But they DO have a responsibility to get their f**ing act together when it comes to data inspection and returning property to innocent people.
From first hand knowledge, I can say that this is a VERY real problem, and that it needs attention at a national level now. If the mere suspicion of misdeeds is enough to confiscate a computer until it is entirely worthless, then law enforcement has effectively bypassed our trial-by-jury system. The punishment comes swiftly and BEFORE guilt or innocence is determined, because the punishment consists of denying a civilian access to his property. It consititutes the same kind of loophole that RICO does.
(see Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act - search altavista)
The problem with punishment before judgement is that sometimes you punish the innocent.
It happened to me.
It could happen to you.
-walker
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Reread the article, asshole2.
This guy was not a stranger who mwalker squealed on, he was a *dormmate* who was apparently using mwalker's server to access the campus network. (It sounds like the campus was cheap and had installed a single 10baseT jack for the entire dorm suite. The seized computer was apparently used as a masquerading firewall to allow all of the dormmates to run their own system.)
In the US, a private citizen is *not* required to report criminal acts which they are not party to. If you think the current drug laws are insane, don't call the cops to complain about the smell of pot coming from your neighbor's yard.
But if the criminal act involves your own property, then failing to report a crime may make you an accessory to that crime. If the dorms had a 10baseT jack for each person and this server was directly attached to that jack (and the guy was in a different bedroom), then mwalker could walk away from the situation.
That's not what happened. Since that material only reached the web because of mwalker's actions and equipment, once he became aware of the likely criminal action he had to decide what to do. Report the guy, or risk arrest as an accessory? Simply asking him to stop was not an option because he could still be convicted of being an accessory after the fact.
Finally, I will not defend the "kiddie porn" cases involving a 17-year-old actress providing fake ID to the producers (e.g., Traci Lords). But the original article made it clear that this was a case that really did involve children. "very young children." There's no doubt that "very young children" are traumatized by sexual activity, and in a situation like this it's reasonable and prudent to check whether the adults in the picture are related to the owner of the system hosting them. After all, 6 GIGABYTES of pornography is a huge amount that wasn't acquired by downloading a mislabeled file or two.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
That really sucks.
Personally, I think this is one of those situations where what they SHOULD do, given that (as per another post on this thread) they need to keep the evidence "pristine," is give someone like you the cash to buy another computer.
Would that be an acceptable compromise?
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Vehicular seizure for mere suspicion of drug use has become a normal practice (one that, by the way, disproportionately targets blacks and latinos) - police in many states do not even need to arrest a suspect or charge them with anything, and they can simply take and sell their vehicle. It has become a very profitable enterprise for many departments.
The ACLU has a good resource page with links to information about some of the abuses - both illegal and currently legal - that law enforcement agencies are engaging in, but one of my favorite sites is this one, run by a former LA policeman who began documenting police abuses and racism after he was attacked by another cop while operating undercover - he now leads a non-profit group that 'stings' officers with hidden cameras and recorders in new vehicles being driven by black men, and the results are dismaying. It's a bit disappointing to me that many so-called libertarians seem a lot more concerned about getting rid of environmental and consumer protection regulations and lowering taxes, than actually protecting citizens from direct and overt abuses of power. The selectiveness of law enforcement is excrutiangly painful in light of the G.W. Bush debacle - the powers-that-be are more than happy to jail the rest of us for mistakes that they have the luxury to simply "outgrow."
Here's another story of police enforcement going out of control, and another.