A US federal appeals court yesterday ruled that police officers
do not need to be physically present when executing a search
warrant at an ISP, according to a report by Reuters. It was
sufficient for the warrant, authorising the search of a Yahoo!
subscriber's e-mail account, to be faxed to Yahoo! employees who
carried out the search.
The case concerned a child pornography investigation. Dale
Robert Bach, now charged with manufacturing, possessing and
transmitting indecent images of children, argued that the retrieval
and search of his e-mail account was illegal because it was
conducted by a civilian Yahoo! employee without the physical
presence of police.
A district court in Minnesota accepted his argument, ruling that
the fax warrant violated constitutional provisions regarding
unreasonable search and seizure. The court therefore decided that
the seized e-mails could not be used as evidence against Bach.
The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling,
reasoning that the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which
prohibits unreasonable search and seizures, does not establish a
physical presence requirement and has returned the case to the
lower court.
