At 2:06 PM -0400 7/20/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:

http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=01/06/26/042210

Denmark Enacts Anti-Piracy Search and Seizure Law posted by vergil on Friday July 20, @10:51AM from the battering-ram-of-the-bsa dept.

If you needed further proof of the U.S. software industry's global muscle, keep reading. The U.S. government, acting on behalf of American firms, has successfully pressured Denmark to change its laws. A document unearthed by Cluebot.com describes how the new law allows physical searches for supposed copyright infringements "without prior notification."

It's surprising to me that there has not been a major test case in the U.S. on the growing use of warrantless searches--searches of houses by the Child Protection Police, searches of businesses by the Microsoft Protection Police, etc. It's as if the Fourth Amendment is now "dead letter law" (to coin a phrase). And while we all know that Europe and Russia are not covered by the U.S. Constitution, it is unacceptable that the U.S. sends money and experts to Europe, Russia, and other parts of the world to teach them to spy on citizens (FBI assistance to Russian security services, for example), to kill citizens (CIA manuals), and to throw out any semblance of respect for property (copyright raids). --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns