BBC 'vague' reporting again!

[Charles Lindsey]

On Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:28:10 -0000, Richard Clayton  
<richard@highwayman.com> wrote:

> Let us suppose that the police execute a search warrant in Kent (to pick
> a recent example county -- albeit in that example there was no
> magistrates warrant because an arrest is sufficient to avoid the need).

I don't think that is right. If they have already arrested X (without  
benefit of any seized computer evidence at that point), surely it still  
requires a Magistrate to decide that it is X's house in Kent (but maybe  
not his holiday cottage in Devon, nor even his mother-in-law's house in  
Kent) that they are now to be entitled to take apart.
>
> The search warrant entitles them to seize computers and storage media to
> examine for evidence of wickedness (albeit with some exemptions for
> privileged material).
>
> If it turns out that the computers are merely thin clients of some kind
> and the data is stored elsewhere -- a common scenario for many years for
> companies, then the search warrant is good within the jurisdiction, so
> that data that is actually held on spinning disks in Kendal can be
> accessed and seized from the machines in Kent. Up until now, this has
> mainly worked out pretty efficiently.

But that supposes that, having seized X's thin computer, they know the  
necessary passwords/whatever to penetrate the firewalls in Kendal, and  
moreover it supposes that the company in Kendal, having become aware of  
X's arrest, have not already removed his privileges to breach their  
firewall.

If X has been arrested for some fraud against the Company in Kendal, then  
they might be prepared to be more cooperative, but I suspect they would  
prefer to "invite" the Polics to visit them and to exhibit such of their  
files as they might wish to reveal, rather than having the Police access  
their live computers without any knowledge of exactly what was examined.  
It the Police want more than that, then they will surely have to convince  
some Magistrate in Kendal.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131                       
   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5