Wednesday, January 03, 2007

 

For the children, etc. etc. ad nauseam

This isn't strictly related to the NHL, but worth noting, I think. Jacob Sullum, "Pee No Evil", Reason Magazine:
When federal agents searched the offices of Comprehensive Drug Testing in Long Beach, California, on April 8, 2004, they officially were looking for the records of 10 baseball players suspected of buying steroids from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), a sports nutrition center whose owners had been charged with illegal steroid distribution. They left with information that went far beyond what their warrant described, including data on 1,200 baseball players and almost 3,000 computer files unrelated to Major League Baseball drug testing.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently told the government it may keep these records because they were "intermingled" with the records of the 10 original targets. But you needn't worry about the privacy of your electronic records, as long as you're confident they haven't been hanging with the wrong crowd.

I'm no lawyer, but I'd recommend to the NHL and NHLPA that their drug testing program be administered in Canada. As Sullum notes (my emphasis):
...this approach puts the burden of preventing an unreasonable seizure on people who may not even realize their records have been taken. In this case, along with information on baseball players, whose union challenged the seizure, the government took the medical records of players in 13 other sports organizations, participants in three athletic competitions, and employees of three businesses.

This is probably a good thing for you and I to know, too, as whatever your attitude is about Drugs!, this ruling is not limited to drug investigations whatsoever (never is).
The 9th Circuit's loose treatment of "intermingled" data allows investigators to peruse the confidential electronic records of people who are not suspects, hoping to pull up something incriminating.

...which is exactly what they're doing. But hey, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide, right?

Comments:

If they were investigating BALCO itself, then I guess I can see how all those records would be relevant. But from the sounds of things, they were just after the players, in which case, that's fishing, and should be shot down in a second by any competent defence lawyer and judge.
 


I'm no lawyer, but I'd recommend to the NHL and NHLPA that their drug testing program be administered in Canada.

Why? You think judges are any more sane in this country? If so, I got some land I can sell you.
 


Why? You think judges are any more sane in this country? If so, I got some land I can sell you.

The Canadian courts, while messed up in their own right, is not quite as 'fast and loose' as the US courts right now, and doesn't not have the same all encompassing 'security' legislation right now either.
 


Wow...I really gotta not post on strange comment boards at early morning hours with lack of sleep; me spreak engrish really gooda.
 


Ah yes, welcome to the Fourth Reich.

Next thing you know, juiced-up athletes will be locked up as "enemy combatants" and shipped off to be held incommunicado in Gitmo for the rest of their lives. That's how paranoid things are starting to get down here.

Heil Bush!
 


and doesn't not have the same all encompassing 'security' legislation right now either.

I think the ruling has less to do with American politicians and judges current obsession wih security than it does with American politicians and judges obsession with baseball. It was always thus, and always thus shall be, until the anti-trust exemption is repealed.
 


I wasn't really going the 'terrorist' route, just using it as an exampled cause the 'anti-terrorist' laws have opened a whole can of worms; whereby it's being applied to a whole whack of stuff that violates its spirit, and many other rulings have gone the way of repressing rights since it happened.

I look at the FBI getting court rulings to take search engine data as an example. MSN, Yahoo et al all complied except for Google who told them that they had an obligation to protect their users and last I heard there were court hearings trying to compel Google to hand over the records and Google was still fighting it.
 

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