Police raids

[David Swarbrick]

The police must have the power to remove whatever is required, subject 
only to proportionality. A proper investigation of a computer can be 
much more complicated than asking what is on teh hard drive.

At the same time, they get it wrong now, becaus they tend to remove 
material far beyond what they will ever really look at. The result is 
that in many cases, businesses and lives will be ruined on teh off 
chance that one day sometime in teh next three years, a budget might be 
made available to look at a hard drive to see whether it might contain 
evidence of a criminal offence. What happens at the moment is 
disproportionate, and effectively dishonest. Officers parade mountains 
of computer equipment stacked up awaitiong inspection with teh clear 
message that it is all brimming with porn, when in reality they have no 
idea what is contained on 99% of the computers they have taken, and 
they know they probably will never get round to looking at it.

They should have a clear obligation to provide copies to proper 
representatives, subject to clearing up any difficulties where they 
consider that this would be putting back into circulation material it 
would be unlawful simply to possess.

> > The Police should be required to copy DVD's, CD's and hard drives, 
and give
> > the copies to the suspect, _before_ they are allowed to remove 
media, if
> > the suspect asks them to.
> 
> Right.

If they think the disc contains child porn, they cannot simply leave it 
or give back copies.

As always there is a balance to be found. The police haven't found it 
yet, by any means.

-- 
David Swarbrıck  david@swarb.freeuk.com
david.swarbrick@lawindexpro.co.uk