JUDGES OK WARRANTLESS MONITORING OF WEB USE

Privacy Rules Don't Apply to Internet Messages, Court Says

Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's
computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the
suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen
register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a
suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of pen registers in 1979,
saying callers have no right to conceal from the government the
numbers they communicate electronically to the phone companies that
carry their calls.

Federal law requires court approval for a pen register. But because
it is not considered a search, authorities do not need a search
warrant, which would require them to show that the surveillance is
likely to produce evidence of a crime.

They also do not need a wiretap order, which would require them to
show that less intrusive methods of surveillance have failed or would
be futile.

In Friday's ruling, the court said computer users should know that
they lose privacy protections with e-mail and Web site addresses when
they are communicated to the company whose equipment carries the messages.

Likewise, the court said, although the government learns what
computer sites someone visited, "it does not find out the contents of
the messages or the particular pages on the Web sites the person viewed."

The search is no more intrusive than officers' examination of a list
of phone numbers or the outside of a mailed package, neither of which
requires a warrant, Judge Raymond Fisher said in the 3-0 ruling.

Defense lawyer Michael Crowley disagreed. His client, Dennis Alba,
was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted of
operating a laboratory in Escondido that manufactured the drug ecstasy.

Some of the evidence against Alba came from agents' tracking of his
computer use. The court upheld his conviction and sentence.

Expert evidence in Alba's case showed that the Web addresses obtained
by federal agents included page numbers that allowed the agents to
determine what someone read online, Crowley said.

The ruling "further erodes our privacy," the attorney said. "The
great political marketplace of ideas is the Internet, and the
government has unbridled access to it."