Wyoming Constitution; Article 1, Section 4....The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by affidavit, particularly describing the places to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.

 

 

 

January 14, 2005

 

Happy Friday,

 

            My main mission for today is to send out a note with no substantial errors! So let’s see how I can do with a little discussion on the bill of the day, Senate File 26…Child exploitation-administrative subpoena. The bill was voted out of committee today by the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 5 to 0 vote.

 

            This is a bill I would deem ‘illegitimate’! It was created under less than honorable circumstances. It is sponsored by the Joint Judiciary Committee, which gives it much more weight than being sponsored by an individual, but the origin of the sponsorship is very questionable.

 

            The issue was not part of the assigned tasks for the Interim Judiciary Committee, the bill was not sent out to the committee members before the meeting where the sponsorship vote was taken, the public did not know what was in the works, and therefore I call the bill ‘illegitimate’.

 

            Besides all of that, which is bad enough, this is a terrible bill. The discussion seems to be driven by the fact that the intended use of the bill is to make it easier to get on the trail of Internet sex predators. A worthy goal for sure, but any bill that involves a significant expansion of the police powers of the State deserves close and critical scrutiny no matter what the topic, and thus far that has not occurred in this case.

 

            I hope to get some good independent legal minds to take a look and see what they think, the link to the bill is…………..

 

http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2005/Introduced/SF0026.pdf

 

            Hey! Come to think of it, there are some great legal minds on this mailing list!! Perhaps we can get an opinion or two and see if my instincts are correct.

 

            My main concern is that the administrative wing of government, in this case the Department of Criminal Investigation within the office of the Attorney General, will be given the power to compel internet service providers to hand over subscriber information without any judicial oversight. That seems like a dangerous precedent to me.

 

            The authorities have investigatory tools they use now that seem to work, but they want a more streamline process.

 

            Of course the new power is just for sex predators for now, but the way these things unfold we will soon see a similar bill that will expand the usage to something else like drug offenses. And after that it will be something else. It’s the age old foot in the door approach.

 

            Holy smokes! It is after 5 pm on a Friday so I better wrap this up. It’s a wrap!!

 

Keith