Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!wuarchive!uunet!world!eff!mnemonic
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: No-knock searches (Was Re: "Bad" backups)
Message-ID: <1990Dec2.164430.15471@eff.org>
Date: 2 Dec 90 16:44:30 GMT
References: <1990Nov20.041806.29066@digibd.com> <1990Nov22.123610.27246@eff.org> <61265@bbn.BBN.COM>
Organization: The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lines: 50

In article <61265@bbn.BBN.COM> cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) writes:
>
>But... I hate to give aid and comfort to the 'enemy', but unfortunately
>the situtation is true, as a matter of fact, and that's irrelevant to
>whether it is used by some as an excuse for no-knock searches.  Fact
>is, that it is just not very hard to make a computer system be "booby
>trapped" so that the "offending bits" vanish in a VERY big hurry.  The
>speed with which computers could make incriminating evidence just
>"vanish" makes flushing amphetamines down the toilet seem crude by
>comparison.

You have exhibited the same conflation of two issues here that is 
present in the writings by prosecutors on this subject. No one disputes
that it is *possible* to boobytrap one's data. But that's not the issue.

The issue is whether law-enforcement officers are actually *likely*
to encounter such boobytraps--a likelihood that would necessitate a
no-knock search.

In all the data available to me, I have not found any reference to
the Secret Service's actually coming across booby-trapped computers
in their searches of teenage hackers. Yet the writings on the subject
suggest that this is a commonplace occurrence.

And the prosecutors who read the writings ask for authorization of
no-knock searches.

>Turning this around, what would you suggest?  Presuming that the LEOs
>continue to pursue various sorts of computer-based crimes [the question
>of the searches is orthogonal to the question of whether they're
>performed in the pursuit of brain-dead legislation, right?], will we be
>better or worse served if they better understand the realities of the
>craft?

How about a showing to the magistrate of probable cause to believe that
the target of the search is likely to have boobytrapped his computer?
That seems like a reasonable prerequisite for a no-knock search.



--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin, (617) 864-0665 |"If the doors of perception were cleansed
mnemonic@eff.org            | every thing would appear to man as it is,
Electronic Frontier         | infinite."
Foundation                  |                 --Blake