http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52935-2003Mar6.html By LARRY NEUMEISTER The Associated Press Thursday, March 6, 2003; 6:58 PM Two federal judges have dealt a potentially crippling blow to a nationwide Internet child pornography crackdown, saying the FBI recklessly misled judges to get search warrants that were used in making more than 100 arrests. Constitutional safeguards cannot be relaxed just because "the crimes are repugnant," said U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in New York as he dismissed evidence obtained against one defendant. Chin's ruling, dated Wednesday, was released publicly Thursday. U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry in St. Louis, throwing out evidence against another defendant Thursday, said "false information was recklessly included in the search warrant application." ... Chin called the intrusion of privacy by the government "potentially enormous." "Thousands of individuals would be subject to search, their homes invaded and their property seized, in one fell swoop, even though their only activity consisted of entering an e-mail address into a Web site from a computer located in the confines of their own homes," he wrote. Defense lawyers said both judges considered new evidence that demonstrates the FBI recklessly used erroneous information in its search warrant applications. Nearly identical applications were used in cases across the country. ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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