ODES!" "It's our job to make sure people don't
trash the Constitution--we're the DEFENDERS of the Constitution!" "We
seize stuff when we know it will be forfeited anyway as restitution for
the victim!"

"If it's forfeitable, then don't get a search warrant, get a forfeiture
warrant," Godwin suggested coolly. He further remarked that most
suspects in computer crime don't WANT to see their computers vanish out
the door, headed God knew where, for who knows how long. They might
not mind a search, even an extensive search, but they want their
machines searched on-site.

"Are they gonna feed us?" somebody asked sourly.

"How about if you take copies of the data?" Godwin parried.

"That'll never stand up in court."

"Okay, you make copies, give THEM the copies, and take the originals."

Hmmm.

Godwin championed bulletin-board systems as repositories of First
Amendment protected free speech. He complained that federal
computer-crime training manuals gave boards a bad press, suggesting
that they are hotbeds of crime haunted by pedophiles and crooks,
whereas the vast majority of the nation's thousands of boards are
completely innocuous, and nowhere near so romantically suspicious.

People who run boards violently resent it when their systems are
seized, and their dozens (or hundreds) of users look on in abject
horror. Their rights of free expression are cut short. Their right to
associate with other people is infringed. And their privacy is
violated as their private electronic mail becomes police property.

Not a soul spoke up to defend the practice of seizing boards. The
issue passed in chastened silence. Legal principles aside--(and those
principles cannot be settled without laws passed or court
precedents)--seizing bulletin boards has become public-relations poison
for American computer police.

And anyway, it's not entirely necessary. If you're a cop, you can get
'most everything you need from a pirate board, just by using an inside
informant. Plenty of vigilantes--well, CONCERNED CITIZENS--will inform
police the moment they see a pirate board hit their area (and will
tell the police all about it, in such technical detail, actually, that
you kinda wish they'd shut up). They will happily supply police with
extensive downloads or printouts. It's IMPOSSIBLE to keep this fluid
electronic information out of the hands of police.

Some people in the electronic community become enraged at the prospect
of