To no one’s surprise, California state law enforcement officials obtained a warrant and executed it at the home of Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who filed the story analyzing the next-generation iPhone that Gizmodo paid $5000 for after it was apparently lost in a bar. Gawker, which owns Gizmodo, has claimed that the search was unlawful. I thought I would offer some tentative thoughts on the legal issues we know so far.
1) Fourth Amendment. Based on the warrant form, and Chen’s report of how the warrant was executed, I don’t see any Fourth Amendment problems. Parts of the warrant are overly broad (such as the boilerplate paragraph 1 of attachment B), but others are not (such as paragraph 3 of attachment B). It doesn’t seem like the officers actually relied on the overly broad portions of the warrant, so the warrant and its execution will pass muster based on what we know so far. Note, though, that I don’t think we have the affidavit yet: The four corners of the affidavit have to articulate probable cause. I suspect that won’t be too hard given what we know of this case, but it’s too early to tell without actually seeing the affidavit.
2) Nighttime Execution. Gawker’s letter contends that the search was unlawful because it was executed at 9:45pm at night when the warrant does not permit nighttime entry. This argument doesn’t work because the California warrant statute makes the critical time 10pm. See California Penal Code 1533. (“Upon a showing of good cause, the magistrate may, in his or her discretion, insert a direction in a search warrant that it may be served at any time of the day or night. In the absence of such a direction, the warrant shall be served only between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.”) You might not think that 9:45pm is daytime, but it is according to the California warrant statute.
3) California Reporter’s Shield. Here things get interesting, although it’s on a somewhat arcane matter of state law. The Gawker letter argues that reporters are exempt from search and seizure under the California Reporter’s Shield law. Specifically, California Penal Code 1524(g) states that no items described in the California reporter’s shield law can be the subject of a search warrant: “No warrant shall issue for any item or items described in Section 1070 of the Evidence Code.” This law was passed in response to Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment allowed the government to obtain a warrant to search a news office for evidence of crime that the news source was gathering in the course of reporting the news.
Here’s the text of Section 1070 of the Evidence Code:
(a) A publisher, editor, reporter, or other person connected with or employed upon a newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, or by a press association or wire service, or any person who has been so connected or employed, cannot be adjudged in contempt by a judicial, legislative, administrative body, or any other body having the power to issue subpoenas, for refusing to disclose, in any proceeding as defined in Section 901, the source of any information procured while so connected or employed for publication in a newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public.(b) Nor can a radio or television news reporter or other person
connected with or employed by a radio or television station, or any person who has been so connected or employed, be so adjudged in contempt for refusing to disclose the source of any information procured while so connected or employed for news or news commentary purposes on radio or television, or for refusing to disclose any unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public.(c) As used in this section, “unpublished information” includes
information not disseminated to the public by the person from whom disclosure is sought, whether or not related information has been disseminated and includes, but is not limited to, all notes, outtakes, photographs, tapes or other data of whatever sort not itself disseminated to the public through a medium of communication, whether or not published information based upon or related to such material has been disseminated.
As far as I can tell, Section 1524(g) has never been interpreted by a court. So it’s not entirely clear what the “items described” refers to in Section 1524(g) — Section 1070 isn’t exactly a list of items. Does “items described” refers to sources of news stories? Or does it refer to “unpublished information obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public”? Or perhaps both?
There isn’t any judicial language here to go on, but at least at first blush (and at 2am) it seems certainly possible that a court could construe this language as meaning that at least part of the warrant violates the California warrant statute. Note that this might be a rather weird result. The unpopular outcome in Zurcher was that the government could target the news-gathering process even though reporters had no involvement in the crime: The police could execute warrants at news offices simply on the theory that crime reporters would have evidence of crime that they would gather in their work. In contrast, the claim here is that the law doesn’t allow state officials to get warrants even if the claim is that the reporters themselves have engaged in crimes. But the California law doesn’t clearly make that distinction, as best I can tell.
(d) Privacy Protection Act. In contrast, the federal version of the same basic law, the Privacy Protection Act, 42 U.S.C. 2000aa, does make that distinction. While it protects journalists and reporters from warrants targeting them for news collected, it mostly allows such warrants if the warrants are targeting the journalist/reporter as the person who committed the offense, which would seem to be the alleged theory of the crime in this case. See 42 U.S.C. 2000aa (a)(1). But we really can’t be sure without looking at the affidavit. Notably, the remedy for a PPA violation is a civil lawsuit, not suppression of any evidence, and there is also a good faith exception to liability.
Anyway, those are just some tentative thoughts. I need to get back to grading a large stack of exams on my desk, so I’ll leave it to others to work through some of the details.
Soronel Haetir says:
As far as the CA statute goes, those seem like some very narrow definitions of who qualifies. I suppose they might argue that they are a periodical, but the narrowness of the list itself would seem to counsel for a circumscribed reading of the list as to who is protected.
I also see nothing in the quoted language that would prevent any law enforcement agency from going the search warrant route as was done in this case. Is there language elsewhere to the effect “no warrant shall issue for materials in the possession of ...”? Protection against contempt for refusing a subpoena is a far cry from being immune to a search warrant. After all, a search warrant requires probable cause that evidence of a crime is at the specified location and found amongst the specified items. Soronel Haetir(Quote)
rb1971 says:
When I was looking at this earlier in the day, it seemed like the search authorized by the warrant was begun prior to 10PM, but may have continued thereafter. I admit I haven’t spent any time looking into this, but does Penal Code 1533 allow a warrant to be executed at 959PM, following which the police can stay and search all night long? rb1971(Quote)
Soronel Haetir says:
Also, what of the claim by the police that they had been waiting for several hours for the guy to get home? I would think the concerns that gave rise to the daytime rule are not present when the police intercept someone returning home. The daytime rule, as I understand it, is intended to cut down on waking people who then think there has been unlawful entry. Obviously that is not going to be the case (or at least not in the same way) when the owner walks up to the police.
So, crediting their claim of having been present, is a warrant actually executed only upon presentment to the premises owner, or has execution in fact begun as soon as the location is secured? I would find it a silly rule that the police could force the owner to find someplace else to stay for the night, but could not actually begin the search until the next morning. And I assume that the police could in fact make an owner stay somewhere else because they did in fact have a warrant and the authorities are allowed to keep people off their property even lacking that when they need time to secure a warrant. Soronel Haetir(Quote)
~aardvark says:
Don’t forget that CA courts have already expanded the definition of journalists to include specifically Apple-gadfly bloggers. In general, I would not be surprised if CA court were more receptive to New Media protections that are extensions of protections for traditional media. If they want to protect their high-tech industry, they also want to protect their high-tech reporting. ~aardvark(Quote)
george weiss says:
does the time of day of execution trigger constitutional concerns? or only statutory? if the latter-than fine b/c of what you said.
but could a search be unreasonable if it occurs at night and no good cause is shown? if so then that presents an issue....obviously the method of execution is cognizable as 4th amendment issue-see the knock and announce rule (which isn’t a exclusion issue-but is a potential damages issue)...so maybe a warrant for evidence of a minor crime which the police have no cause to believe is going anywhere executed in the middle of the night is unreasonable?
some state courts of last resort have held nighttime execution as having constitutional dimensions. See e.g State v. Jackson, 742 N.W.2d 163, 174 (Minn 2007).
it probably has not come up much because most if not all jurisdictions have statutory rules prohibiting nighttime execution when there is no cause-and the doctrine of constitutional avoidance has the courts simply viewing the statute as tracking any constitutional problem with nighttime execution as a statutory violation.
but here the issue may come up if the statute defines 10pm as night and it was not night. the statute may be not violated but leave open a possibility of constitutional violation. george weiss(Quote)
Gene Hoffman says:
As to the CA shield law, I think that the DA here would have a hard time arguing that Mr. Chen is not a member of the press when Apple has issued him multiple press passes to previous Apple events.
–Gene Gene Hoffman(Quote)
Apperception says:
Again, commenters, please purchase plenty of malpractice liability insurance. The legal reasoning is scary bad. Apperception(Quote)
PersonFromPorlock says:
Somewhere ‘way in the back of my mind is the idea that the daytime requirement is to make it harder for the government to conduct abusive searches secretly. PersonFromPorlock(Quote)
devilinthedetails says:
keep reading the PPA statute — while it does allow warrants to seize material related to a crime if the journalist is thought to have committed that crime, it clearly EXEMPTS journalists if:
“the offense to which the materials relate consists of the receipt, possession, communication, or withholding of such materials or the information contained therein”
(unless in the cases of national security or child pornography)
this would seem to make it clear that if the crime being investigated is larceny or possession of stolen goods, the police were in the wrong acting on this warrant... devilinthedetails(Quote)
Paul says:
I’m a little confused — are you saying a “reporter” could say he’s doing an article on chop shops (the type that soup up stolen cars)so he could buy a stolen vehicle as part of the “research” — and the police could not execute a warrant to recover the vehicle from his garage? Paul(Quote)
Soronel Haetir says:
That would be fine if the CA statute were to base itself on being “press”.
I will, however, admit to being hard-pressed to come up with another category of typical reporting that would be excluded by these definitions. Certainly the section that specifically limits itself to TV and radio media is of no help here.
Also, for all I know, these folks do produce some printed material, even if the online stuff dominates. Soronel Haetir(Quote)
ShelbyC says:
Does one “serve” the warrant at the beginning of the search? Or is the whole search “serving” the warrant. If the latter then in sounds like they need to be done by 10, not just start by 10. ShelbyC(Quote)
~aardvark says:
Most lawyers are scary bad, even those who went to Ivies ~aardvark(Quote)
~aardvark says:
On-line is print! ~aardvark(Quote)
~aardvark says:
No. There are limits on what is shielded, but computer equipment used to collect information, communicate with sources and to edit and produce the actual journalistic work-product would certainly be shielded. Just like lawyers and priests can sometimes be criminals, so can journalists. Even “absolute” privileges are not really absolute. But this should not be such a case. The benefit to the bloggers was the product of their journalism, not from the appropriation of the product. And they returned the product to claimed owner, so the search was certainly not for stolen property. It was a fishing trip, which is what shield laws are specifically intended to prevent. ~aardvark(Quote)
uberVU - social comments says:
Chris Travers says:
I don’t see any overt problems in the material known so far. I would expect that courts would rule that the journalism shield protects journalists from search warrants investigating their sources, but not investigations of the journalists themselves.
However, what I want to know is what’s in the affidavit. I find the search warrant affidavits to be far more informative than the warrants themselves as to what’s really going on.
Finally I would point out that the mere execution of a search warrant shouldn’t be seen as strongly supporting a conclusion that anything Gizmodo of their employees did was illegal. As I said in my previous review (IANAL, etc), I think such a case would turn on technical elements. That there is enough evidence for a search warrant is no surprise, but that doesn’t resolve the main issues of the case.
One reason however I won’t do business at all with Apple is that they are litigation-happy. However prosecuting technology blogs which hype your products is not a good way forward. I fully expect this to cause issues for them down the road. Chris Travers(Quote)
Chris says:
So if you commit a crime and then blog about the crime, you’re safe from a warrant? How can that be? The statute is not intended to protect the alleged perpetrator, but rather to protect legitimate newsgathering, which serves an important function — not this joker. Chris(Quote)
John Armstrong says:
Chris is right: The shield law is a red herring with respect to Mr. Chen. It protects reporters from giving up their sources, not the reporters themselves.
If the police are trying to charge whoever sold Mr. Chen the prototype with theft, then the shield law comes into play. But if they’re charging Mr. Chen with accepting stolen property, then it’s not relevant.
As for fishing, I find it perfectly reasonable to suspect that Mr. Chen’s computers would contain communications with whomever sold him the prototype, and those communications would contain evidence proving that Mr. Chen knew the provenance of the device and purchased it anyway. Not every warrant is a fishing expedition.
In the end, the Macalope said it best. John Armstrong(Quote)
PatHMV says:
Is the affidavit which supported the warrant available anywhere yet? All they give Gizmodo, or all that Gizmodo posted, was the warrant itself, which refers to but does not include the affidavit. PatHMV(Quote)
pc says:
So if I: find a company’s property in a bar; attempt to return that property to the company; my attempt is rebuked by a representative of that company; sell the property to an interested party *having been rebuked by its rightful owner*; and the interested party returns the property to the rightful owner; I can be charged with a crime? The interested party can be charged with a crime? Gizmodo notified Apple they had the phone after they confirmed it was actually a 4G iPhone. This was weeks after the guy who found the phone contacted Apple and told them he had the phone. A reasonable attempt was made to return the phone and the guy who found it was told to pound sand. Why is California wasting tax payer money and law enforcement resources on this? pc(Quote)
Gizmodo Blogger Raided « Aetherczar says:
d says:
I am particularly tickled by your last statement on the remedy for the PPA violation.
The fact that a search rendered statutorily illegal — that is to say that the federal government shall not have the power to do something — has no suppression remedy is amusing. The suppression remedy was, in part, an incentive to prevent the government from doing what it knew to be beyond its power.
Obviously, the glaring difference is Constitutional authority versus statutory authority. More differences include the warrant issued, and so on.
But looking at is as a matter of aligning punishment incentives, the decision to punish with civil suit comes off as strange.
As a matter of law and economics, the government prints money, so what fine is too big to disincentivize action? And, even if you found that sum, I would guess that the ones that do the acts are not those that pay. I read the statute linked, but didn’t look for the penalty sections. So, the low level guys will do it, give a mea culpa, pay the fine, and send a person to jail.
As a matter of social pressure, it still comes back to the suppression remedy and things like the spirit of the 5th Amendment. The 5th Amendment is a right shared by the innocent as much as the guilty. Except, most of our criminal constitutional cases come up with unsympathetic defendants.
Condemnation of government action would likely be low when used to arrest the guilty and unsympathetic. So the motivation there is neither to change the politicians or change the system. This is the Willy Horton-type dilemma.
Thus, without social pressure or economic pressure, I wonder what makes the federal law anything more than an act with bark, but no bite. d(Quote)
josh says:
Just have to leave this comment on new posts b/c there are no relevant posts on the subject:
Count me disappointed that one of my favorites blogs (legal or otherwise, libertarian or not) has been virtually silent on the Az birther/immigration issue. The amount of breath spent on the constitutionality of “Obamacare” and nothing (even in support) for these laws, except for a single tangential post by Stewart Baker on 4/24?!?
I’m astounded. josh(Quote)
nicehonesty says:
I agree with josh. We’ve already seen riots, physical assaults, vandalism, and multiple threats by the anti-government extremists opposed to the recently passed, majority-supported Arizona law which enforces various federal immigration laws.
Will people only start paying attention to these violent unAmerican nutjobs when they actually kill someone? nicehonesty(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
One lesson to be drawn here: When asked for property back when you are attempting to return it, never say “we didn’t know it was stolen” unless the other party brings it up first. Chris Travers(Quote)
Crunchy Frog says:
Question: has josh (and his sock puppet nicehonesty) been banned yet? If not, why not? Crunchy Frog(Quote)
Matt says:
pc says:
It seems disputable that a reasonable attempt was made to return it. Surely, a reasonable person would realize that the low level customer support representatives of a multinational corporation would not be the best people to talk to, as they would have no information about secret prototypes. And after that effort failed, wouldn’t a reasonable person try to contact someone higher up in the pecking order, maybe the manager of an Apple store, or take it or mail it directly to Apple HQ in Cupertino which is not that far away? But before any of that, wouldn’t it make sense to take it to the bar where it was lost? From what I read, the employee who lost it repeatedly contacted the bar asking about it, to no avail. The finder’s “effort” seems like the most perfunctory, CYA attempt which he knew wouldn’t work, to give him the excuse to sell it. Matt(Quote)
Dan Weber says:
Intent is critical for theft. If I find a phone, I may not have intent to deprive the owner of it. Does that intent change if I sell the phone to someone else? I’m not sure it does, although I have now benefited from them not having it.
I’ll also say that contacting the bar where the phone was found would have been very reasonable. Perhaps not legally required, but if I lost something at the Y, I would ask the Y if it turned up. Dan Weber(Quote)
PatHMV says:
Matt, the guy who found it had no particular reason to know, initially, that it was a “secret prototype.” And the guy stayed around the bar for awhile after finding the phone, in case the owner came back for it.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, Apple could have made it very easy to return its property. All it would take is a sticker on the back that said: “Property of Apple. If found, please call 800–555-1212 immediately.” They didn’t do that. It’s not the finder’s job to take up hours of his day trying to figure out who is the right person at Apple to receive it. PatHMV(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
Many of your suggestions seem reasonable, however, when I was a low-level customer support representative of a multinational corporation, yes, I would have been an acceptable person to talk to about anything equivalent.
Secondly it’s often problematic to just “walk into” a corporate headquarters. At a company like Microsoft, the receptionists were all temps, and knew far less about anything like this than the support people. Also security would get upset if you tried to park your care anywhere on campus without prior permission, esp. if it wasnt a quick in/out sort of thing.
At Intel Corp, they have no receptionists, only security guards. They are VERY good at checking your cards, telling you not to go where you aren’t supposed to go, etc. but I wouldn’t expect them to be well prepared to handle something of this nature.
Neither situation is good.
As for MAILING it in? Good grief.... If one was wrong about it being Apple’s.....
Honestly, if I had something similar, yeah, I would call tech support and explain why I thought this was Apple’s. I would ask the representative to get his/her manager on the phone if I wasn’t believed. I would ask for a followup, ideally from their legal team. I say this having worked in these environments. Of course it is probably not reasonable to expect the other guy to have considered asking to speak with a manager or to have asked for a followup from legal...
But there are no good answers. I suppose one could go to sec.gov, look up Apple Corp’s corporate agent, and send a certified letter to them stating that the item was found and might well be Apple’s.... But is not going that far unreasonable? I doubt it. Chris Travers(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
When I did a contract stint for Intel Corp, they refused to use such stickers because it was believed that this would make items a theft target. I am not questioning your analysis, just saying it may not have been the best way forward for Apple. Chris Travers(Quote)
Tatil says:
Actually, I’ve seen posts of some CA law that says it actually is a legal requirement along with a few other options. Tatil(Quote)
PatHMV says:
Chris, I agree. I noted as much in the other thread, my point being that it was Apple’s choice to not clearly identify itself as the owner of the phone, on the phone, and so they should have to suffer the consequences of that choice. Right now, they seem to want to have the benefit of having all Apple phones presumed to be theirs without actually incurring the theft risk of labeling them. PatHMV(Quote)
josh says:
Crunchyfrog
Why should I be banned? At most, I’m guilty of tangential commenting. I was just asking why, on one of my favorite blogs, a libertarian one at that, there have been virtually no posts about the Az situation. I just find it odd given the volume regarding health care and other laws that appear, at least to me, less constitutionally suspect and less liberty infringing.
As to the guy who has commented after me in each thread, I have no idea who he is. Why would you think he is my sockpuppet? He seems to be making fun of me (or the people I arguably agree with, who oppose the Az laws). josh(Quote)
Chris Travers says:
Agreed.
Also Apple agents apparently requested permission to search at least one home in connection with this incident.... (Yes, you read that right. Apple personnel, not police.) Chris Travers(Quote)
d says:
I’m not sure what kind of duty you would want a court to impose on a person as a returner of lost property. A reasonably diligent effort perhaps. Compare the person who walks up to a single representative at an apple store location and the person says: “here I want to return this,” holding up the phone with the person who calls multiple representatives saying: I have this wonky phone that doesn’t look natural but works. Please take it back.
At that point, Apple did not have internal policies conducive to getting its property back. To impose much more of a duty to return on an individual would set a really high bar for someone who found something. I mean, what does it mean if you found something like money? Although there are serial numbers, it is arguably fungible. Considering the steps taken to return the device to Apple, how diligent of an attempt to return cash would you require? d(Quote)
PersonFromPorlock says:
I went off Apple years ago, after I realised that they defined ‘communication’ as what happened when they emitted a press release. Unless they’ve gotten a lot better at responding to inquiries since then, maybe any amount of trying to determine the phone’s ownership would have failed. PersonFromPorlock(Quote)
iPhone HD saga continues: lawyers retained & shield laws doubted - SlashGear says:
~aardvark says:
The discussion of duty to return has been absolutely absurd. First, just because the phone has an Apple logo on it does not mean that it was Apple’s property. In fact, a part of the problem is that the “finder” called Apple several times and no one at Apple ever acknowledged that it was their property. He tried to identify the phone’s “owner” by internal information–and appears to have done so–but the information was “wiped out remotely”, apparently by someone at Apple who did realize that the phone was missing.
There is some conflicting information coming from the “finder”. The Wired story now says that the phone was never “sold” to Gizmodo, but was essentially rented for exclusive use. I’ve mentioned earlier–although maybe not here–that it was easy for the “finder” to claim that he made an effort to find the owner but did not have the resources so he went to a blogger who had the resources to do a better job of it. In fact, this is exactly what the “finder” and Gizmodo are now claiming.
Unless the finder was, in fact, a pickpocket, no one will be prosecuted in this case and Apple, once again, will come across as a big bully towards its biggest fans–kind of like Paramount telling trekkie fan sites to seize and desist.
There is another possibility. Faced with Microsoft-like missed deadlines, Apple people decided to generate some excitement and publicity from speculations about the new product coming down the line. It is possible that the employee (Palmer) was just careless and dropped the phone at the bar while test-riding the prototype. It is also possible that the phone was intentionally planted in a tech-savvy area to be discovered. But once someone at Apple, perhaps unaware of the plant, started a formal investigation, no one was going to stop it out of fear of embarrassment should the “plant” story come out. So they let the investigation proceed vigorously, knowing full well that it would not get anywhere.
This is a mere speculation. I am not claiming the “plant” story as fact, just as a distant possibility. But anyone who is having a knee-jerk reaction and siding with law enforcement because Chen is a “jerk” and “not a real journalist” is an idiot. No one would hold it against you if you simply stated the latter as your opinion. But to go so far as to justify a flimsy search warrant based on that opinion is stupid, especially considering that facts that are coming out completely contradict this version of the story. If you assume that the “finder” and the blogger are lying, you have no choice but to admit that Apple may be lying too.
Some people here are always too happy to accuse someone they don’t like of crimes or just plain nefarious intent without knowing the law or caring about the law and the facts. Given that this is an academic law blog, this is really not a good place to hold that exercise. There are plenty of storm-trooper blogs you can express your opinion on. Such idiocy would be welcomed by Althouse commentors, for example, with open arms. Of course, this has not been helped by newbies Baker and Anderson who have made outrageous unsupported claims in their posts, or a couple of other regulars who sometimes just sound batshit crazy. But, for the most part, the main Conspirators are a measured rational bunch who have a right to expect their readers to behave in the same manner. It’s disappointing that these expectations are not being met. ~aardvark(Quote)
a saga do iPhone HD continua: advogados retidos & leis de protetor duvidadas « Portugal Digital says:
~aardvark says:
Sorry–that’s Powell, not Palmer... ~aardvark(Quote)
iPhone HD saga continues: lawyers retained & shield laws doubted | Internet Enabled TV Reviews says:
John says:
A strange discussion thread that appears to show significant lack of knowledge about California laws.
If you find anything of a $100 value or more (and an iPhone clearly would fall into that category, a prototype even more so) and you know the owner then you should return it to him. If you do not know the owner, you give it to the police or county sheriff who will attempt to return it to the owner. See California penal code section 485:L and California civil code section 2080.
Simply by taking charge of the phone (which he is not required to do) the finder he accepted the obligation to act as a depositary for the owner, and to return the item to the owner at no charge. Legally, he is a depository for hire with all the legal obligations that entails. Attempting to return the phone to Apple and being rebuffed doesn’t excuse the finder of his duty to pass the item to the police, and it certainly doesn’t allow the finder to appropriate the item for his own use. Based on the published reports of the actions by the finder, there appears to a good case for a felony conviction for grand theft as the item exceeded $400 in value.
The case is only bolstered by the finder accepting a substantial amount of money (reports say $5,000) for the phone, and reports from other web sites that the finder attempted to sell the phone to them.
With regards to the journalist, California penal code section 496 requires people purchasing goods (for example, at a swap meet) to make inquiry to ascertain that the goods are not stolen, if the value of the transaction exceeds $900. Read the statute for more details. Did the journalist do this? If he didn’t, he’s still guilty of accepting stolen goods.
The journalist shield laws are a red herring. They were enacted to protect a source, not to protect a journalist from his own actions. They protect a journalist from a contempt subpoena for failing disclose the identity of a source. They do not protect a journalist against service of a search warrant to determine the legality of his own actions.
The time of day is also a red herring. The warrant is served prior to the search — 9:45PM was an appropriate time to serve the warrant, and the search may take as long as necessary after service.
btw, I’m a retired police officer. Been there, done that. John(Quote)
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soegemaskineoptimering says:
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