Blogger's Laptop Confiscated

By Chelsea Halvorson

A blogger's laptop was confiscated when the police searched his home in mid-March, according to the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, (RCFP). Along with his laptop, the blogger, Jeff Pataky says that police also took his wireless router and various paper files from his home according to the RCFP

Pataky runs the site BadPhoenixCops.com, a site that is critical of of the police department in Phoenix, Arizona. The RCFP says that Pataky has run the police site for about a year, and he says that it focuses on the chief, Jack Harris, and the way he manages his officers. Pataky thinks the raid on his home was in response to both his critical writing on the police and to a civil rights lawsuit he filed against the department after he faced assault charges (dismissed last spring) in an unrelated domestic case, according to the RCFP.

Although the officers did have a search warrant according to the RCFP, Pataky is now involved in a lawsuit against them. Since the raid occurred in mid-March, he has been talking to his lawyer about adding another claim for the confiscation of his computer and files to the pending lawsuit, because searches and seizures of journalists' work is against the federal Privacy Protection Act.

Questions:
- Because Pataky is writing a blog, do you think that he has legal grounds for claiming federal Privacy Protection? (The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 makes it "illegal for police or other government officials investigating a crime to search for or seize work products or other documentary materials possessed by a 'person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast, or other similar form of public communication' when the person is not suspected of a crime," (Hopkins, pg 338). )
- Although they had a search warrant, did the police officers have a legal right to take Pataky's computer? Why or why not?