Scary Statistics
"The Justice Department had detained fewer than 50 people as material witnesses without charging them in the war in terror as of January and had gained 47 court-ordered delays in notifying people of search warrants, according to documents released Tuesday. "
Libraries have also been contacted about 50 times about what the patrons have been doing.
The government's characterization of 50 people being arrested without charges as "fewer than" does not take the sting out of it happening.
Update: The NYTimes reports
"[A]ccording to the report, the Justice Department sought 248 times to delay having to notify the target of an investigation that a warrant had been executed. The department said it was never turned down by a court in its requests to delay the notification, and the delays sometimes amounted to 90 days or more."
This bothers me:
"In the case of the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001, for instance, the department said a provision of the law allowing a court to issue a search warrant in another jurisdiction allowed a Washington judge to issue a warrant for Florida."
For those of you who need a translation, this means that the government can find that one judge who will sign any warrant put in front of him and use him to sidestep that pesky judge in Iowa or Texas or . . . who just won't sign people's rights away. And then under Leon the search will, of course, be valid even if that judge would not have issued it.
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