Re: Not necessarily crypto but scary anyway...

["L. McCarthy" <lmccarth@ducie.cs.umass.edu>]

root writes:
> A friend advises me that today House Bill 666 passed. This supposedly would
> allow police officers to use evidence collected illegaly if they 'believed'
> that it was collected in good faith.

Ben writes:
# This sounds like a spoof.  Look at the number.

No, it's for real. This is the `Exclusionary Rule Reform Act of 1995', HR 666.
It was introduced Jan. 25 by a Rep. McCollum, referred to the Judiciary Cmte.,
and on Feb. 2 was "committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the State 
of the Union and ordered to be printed", whatever that means.

Here's an excerpt of the main idea: 

"Evidence [...] shall not be excluded [...] on the ground that the search or 
seizure was in violation of the fourth amendment [...] if the search or 
seizure was carried out in circumstances justifying an objectively reasonable 
belief that it was in conformity with the fourth amendment. The fact that 
evidence was obtained pursuant to and within the scope of a warrant 
constitutes prima facie evidence of the existence of such circumstances."

So I suppose this opens the possibility that, if a judge grants a search 
warrant that allows broader police powers than the 4th Amendment would, then 
the police have free reign to use those broader powers.

This is all via http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c104query.html.

-L. Futplex McCarthy