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1995-02-09 - Re: Not necessarily crypto but scary anyway…

Header Data

From: “L. McCarthy” <lmccarth@ducie.cs.umass.edu>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Message Hash: 9ff4d4c69c6ad0cc6a0347a9962a00f09db9d132da0e81ad11d59361c8ab0ff5
Message ID: <199502090231.VAA04807@ducie.cs.umass.edu>
Reply To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950208204415.11813A-100000@jaguar.zoo.cs.yale.edu>
UTC Datetime: 1995-02-09 02:29:57 UTC
Raw Date: Wed, 8 Feb 95 18:29:57 PST

Raw message

From: "L. McCarthy" <lmccarth@ducie.cs.umass.edu>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 95 18:29:57 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: Not necessarily crypto but scary anyway...
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950208204415.11813A-100000@jaguar.zoo.cs.yale.edu>
Message-ID: <199502090231.VAA04807@ducie.cs.umass.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


root writes:
> A friend advises me that today House Bill 666 passed. This supposedly would
> allow police officers to use evidence collected illegaly if they 'believed'
> that it was collected in good faith.

Ben writes:
# This sounds like a spoof.  Look at the number.

No, it's for real. This is the `Exclusionary Rule Reform Act of 1995', HR 666.
It was introduced Jan. 25 by a Rep. McCollum, referred to the Judiciary Cmte.,
and on Feb. 2 was "committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the State 
of the Union and ordered to be printed", whatever that means.

Here's an excerpt of the main idea: 

"Evidence [...] shall not be excluded [...] on the ground that the search or 
seizure was in violation of the fourth amendment [...] if the search or 
seizure was carried out in circumstances justifying an objectively reasonable 
belief that it was in conformity with the fourth amendment. The fact that 
evidence was obtained pursuant to and within the scope of a warrant 
constitutes prima facie evidence of the existence of such circumstances."

So I suppose this opens the possibility that, if a judge grants a search 
warrant that allows broader police powers than the 4th Amendment would, then 
the police have free reign to use those broader powers.

This is all via http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c104query.html.

-L. Futplex McCarthy

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