BBC 'vague' reporting again!

[Richard Clayton]

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In article <op.uljrt7vq6hl8nm@clerew.man.ac.uk>, Charles Lindsey
<chl@clerew.man.ac.uk> writes

>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. 

Well, the Home Office have recently been consulting on the provisions of
PACE 1984 ... you'd presumably want to see s18 removed

>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 power extends to premises which are "occupied or controlled by a
person who is under arrest for an arrestable offence"

>> 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.

yes ... but you're back in the realm of what Ian Batten helpfully called
"law abiding criminals".  Many searches of company computers are carried
out with the help and assistance of the company and/or their sysadmins

>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.

the search warrant from Kent is perfectly good in Kendal (and in
Cardiff)... whether it is good in Kirkcaldy I'm unsure (I believe
probably not)

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin

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