Today's Knoxville News Sentinel has a story about a federal search warrant that was executed at an East Tennessee cockfighting pit in May 2004 (story is here: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/au...rants-debated/ ). The search was part of the FBI's massive Operation Rose Thorn, which was investigating organized crime and public corruption and undercovered extensive cockfighting operations.
The problem is that the search warrant was a delayed notification warrant. Agents covertly entered the property under the cover of darkness, copied the contents of a computer hard drive, completed their search and left, and the owner wasn't notified that his property had been searched for another three months.
The story makes a big deal out of the Patriot Act's connection to these delayed notification warrants. As I understand it, delayed notification warrants have been used for years, but only rarely and when someone's life was in jeopardy. The Patriot Act cleared the way for them to be used with much more regularity. The story cites a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice report to Congress in which it was revealed that delayed notification warrants made up just 0.2% of the total search warrants requested that year, but also added that just 12% of all delayed notification warrants were related to terrorism . . . the entire point of the Patriot Act, after all. The numbers for how much the issuance of these "sneak-and-peek" warrants have increased since the Patriot Act's conception wasn't mentioned, but I suspect that they've increased dramatically.
I can see where these types of warrants would be helpful to law enforcement. Let's say you have information that a suspect is involved in drug trafficking. If you just sweep in and arrest him, his buyers and suppliers get wind of the investigation and take cover. By doing a sneak-and-peek search of his property, you can find records of who is supplying him and who is buying from him. By the same token, if someone is dealing in child pornography. You go in and search his home and the people he's supplying the porn to or who are supplying him with the porn learn of it and they destroy the evidence on their end and prosecution of additional suspects becomes very difficult. But if you can do a sneak-and-peek search, you can search their computer and find out who they're distributing to and receiving from without anyone knowing that you're investigating until you're ready to bust the entire ring at once.
That's pretty cool and definitely helpful. But is it constitutional? The courts have upheld in the past that it is. Are we skating on dangerously thin ice when we allow the 4th Amendment to be walked on for the sake of the prosecution of crimes being made easier and more efficient?
I don't really know the answers to those questions, but I'll say this: I'm very uneasy about the principles of the Patriot Act being applied to the fight against domestic crime, although we all knew that they would be.
What say you?
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i'm uneasy the theÂ*FBI has nothing better to do than raid a cockfight.Â* Â*
This investigation did not begin as a cockfighting investigation, but as an investigation of public corruption and organized crime, and it just turned out that they were linked in with the cockfighting.
One would hope that raiding cockfights would fall under the duties of the local sheriff. But the sheriff was accepting bribes from the cockfight pit owners to allow them to stay in business. His deputies were going to pick up the payoffs and were even serving as security at the fights. One of his sergeants had a private line installed to the e-911 system so cockfighters and liquor dealers could call and run the tag numbers of suspicious looking vehicles in the area to make sure the vehicles didn't belong to investigators. The Tennessee Highway Patrol and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation was also allegedly involved, tipping off the cockfight pits to pending federal raids. It is a crazy, crazy story . . . one that the FBI had no choice but to get involved in.
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We must be the change we wish to see in the world -- Ghandi
http://www.rightminded.net
Sneak and Peeks have been around for a while, but you have to jump through hoops to get them, and then you run the risk of getting your evidence tossed out in motions. Patriot Act made them easier to obtain, and easier to keep them secret. JMO, but it has been my experience that your time is better spent running a good undercover investigation. That gets you into all kinds of places without a warrant. It also holds up better in court, and looks better to a jury.
Tell that to GWB he said it, and is prooving that is how he feels.
Well, looking at the post above, it looks to me like Charlie P said it. If Bush said all gay people should be imprisoned, would you come back here and post "All gay people should be imprisoned"?
I laugh every time I see someone say that Bush said that. There's only one person who ever reported that he said it. That was Doug Thompson at Capital Hill Blue. Given Thompson's history, nothing he reports can be believed unless someone else also reports it. Remember his story quoting an expert who doesn't exist who was supposedly at a Bush briefing and said that Bush fabricated Iraq WMD evidence? Thompson ran this big story about WMD evidence being fabricated and come to find out, he was quoting someone with a made-up name who wasn't at the meeting to begin with.
None of the people at the meeting when Bush supposedly said this about the Constitution (and remember, these were Congressional types, not cabinet members who could lose their jobs) have come forward and said "Yes, Bush said this."
And, in fact, Thompson later himself said that two of his three sources who said Bush said it weren't present at the meeting after all, and the third source would no longer confirm that Bush said it.
So it appears that Bush didn't say that after all, did he Charlie? But, please, don't let a thing like the truth stand in the way of your Bush hatred.
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We must be the change we wish to see in the world -- Ghandi
http://www.rightminded.net
Boy, those cockfights are sure a threat to society. Glad to see my tax dollars put to good use.[&:]
I knew the unPatriotic acts would come to this. Terrorism was nothing but a convenient scare to frighten the masses into believing chipping away at their Constitutional rights was necessary. The trick is to keep the majority saying "It doesn't affect me."
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You may beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride!
Boy, those cockfights are sure a threat to society. Glad to see my tax dollars put to good use.[&:]
I knew the unPatriotic acts would come to this. Terrorism was nothing but a convenient scare to frighten the masses into believing chipping away at their Constitutional rights was necessary. The trick is to keep the majority saying "It doesn't affect me."
Actually, it doesn't affect me. I don't associate with organized criminals, NFL thugs, or cock-fighting rings. The law was being broken, and action was taken.
Now, I don't believe that the Constitution should be suspended for Americans in America, but everything I hear about regarding the Patriot Act is old news. If a lawyer can prove these sneak-and-peaks violate the Fourth Amendment, or any other, more power to him. But until then,complaining is meaningless.
For crying out loud, the NSA's Echelon program has been recording and data-mining electronic communications since the 70's, and it's helped save American lives and interestslong before the Department of Homeland Security came into being. I know a lot of people don't want to believe it, but the Feds are not out to trample upon the American people at their leisure.
Sneak-and-peek warrants?
