--- Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 14:20:03 -0400 From: Ben Brunk To: declanat_private Subject: I think this will interest many politech readers Please remove my e-mail address if you post this, thanks. Chapel Hill High School student's blog becomes subject of "FBI" investigation http://indyweek.com/durham/current/triangles.html http://www.upsaid.com/erinrocksout/index.php http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/2579239p-2393565c.html Ms. Carter should know that anything she puts up on a website is accessible to everyone in the world. Ignoring the fact that she suffers the consequences for choosing to publish her diary to the world and thus not protect her own privacy, what I find troubling about this story is that local police are identifying themselves as federal agents merely because they've been recruited into a federal cybercrime task force. This news conforms with many other accounts of the disastrous results associated with the federalization of police forces around the country. We have substance prohibition to thank for this. The chilling of free speech is always a reason for concern. As with TIA, cyercrime investigators have a high probability of targeting the innocent simply due to the fact that there are only a tiny handful of miscreants in the world. It is hypocritical (but not very surprising) for a town that is such a celebrated bastion of liberalism to be involved in questionable federal programs that lead to problems for its citizens. If they are sworn local police officers, they are bound by North Carolina laws, as well as the state and US Constitutions, both of which prohibit secret searches. That piece of garbage called the PATRIOT Act does not preempt the Bill or Rights, and police shouldn't pretend that it does. Also, it is no trivial matter that local police are enforcing federal laws. There was already a US Supreme Court decision with regards to the Brady Act (gun background checks), that determined that local police cannot (voluntarily or not) enforce federal laws without compensation. There are probably more relevant decisions that I am unaware of. I'm sure in this case there is some convoluted legal veneer of justification for it all, but that isn't going to be much comfort if more and more outrageous incidents take place. If local police are unaccountable to local leaders and the citizens they SERVE, what have we got? Ben Brunk, PhD ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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