LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
Police Presence Not Required
Posted by Paul Szynol on Monday, November 18 @ 21:23:38 EST News
Some time in 2000, a concerned mother discovered a log of chat room conversations between her under age son and a stranger. Worried, she notified the police.

The stranger turned out to be a registered sex offender, and, on October 11, 2000, Sgt. Brook Thomas Schaub of the City of Saint Paul Police Department asked his ISP, Yahoo, to keep an archive of his transmissions. Yahoo complied.

Some time later, the police department faxed to Yahoo a copy of a search warrant. Yahoo's employees retrieved the relevant information, and forwarded it to the police.

When the case went to trial (US v. Bach), however, United States District Court Judge Paul A. Magnuson found the execution of the warrant "defective". Sgt. Brook Thomas Schaub should have been physically present during the warrant's execution, the Judge wrote, and his absence "when the warrant was executed amount[ed] to a violation of both federal and state law that implicates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution".

After the ruling, Yahoo objected to the possibility of having on its premises unpredictable numbers of police officers executing search warrants.

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has overturned the lower court's ruling. Police presence during the execution of a search warrant at an ISP is not required.

Reuters reports here.

 
Login
Nickname

Password

Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As a registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name.
Related Links
· here
· More about News
· News by Paul Szynol


Most read story about News:
Shiver Me Timbers! Pirates Take to the High Seas

Options

Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend
"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 0 comments
Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.


Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die

All stories, comments and submissions copyright their respective posters.
Everything Else Copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).