CDR: Re: police IR searches to Supremes

[Alan Olsen]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Tim May wrote:

> At 3:10 PM -0400 9/28/00, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> >           I'm having a very difficult time comprehending how plant
> >lights could even remotely be construed as "probable cause" -- don't the
> >courts have any idea of the millions of little old ladies (and whoever)
> >who use plant lights for their house plants? Or of the multitudes who
> >use them to jump start gardens every Spring, or the many who actually
> >grow veggies hydroponically in their basement?
> >
> 
> Beside the point, from their point of view.
> 
> "Probable cause" is a an excuse, not a requirement to act. Meaning, 
> if they subpoena the records of Alice's Hydroponics or Bob's Lamp 
> Shop and discover that the purchases were made by a little old lady, 
> they don't _have_ to launch a S.W.A.T. raid and call in the napalm 
> strikes.

It has not stopped them in the past.  Here in Oregon, the local LEAs were
caught using illegal wiretaps to listen in on the local hydroponics
dealer.  (I never heard what became of that case. probably swept under the
carpet like so many others around here.)

Of course, this is the city that was sending information about
undesirables to the JDL.

[snip]

> (Apparently no shoot outs with the narcs, as these were mostly 
> hippy-dippy potheads, no doubt afraid of having babyklling assault 
> weapons.)

They go after pot growers because few of them shoot back.  (Unlike dealers
in harder substances.)  With the seizure laws, these raids become a high
income - low risk form of fund raising for the department.

> By the way, imagine what Big Bro will be able to do by further 
> cross-correlating these lists with lists of rifle owners (courtesy of 
> our new gun registration laws), and with other records. No wonder 
> Oracle is selling so much software to LEAs.

Of course, if you look at Oracle's license fees, they are going to be
lucky if they can buy bullets after Oracle's sales people get done with
them...

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