Glad to see I'm not the only one who read the document. I don't see how the police really screwed this one up that much outside of one poorly-worded section of the warrant.
Poorly worded probable cause would be, "I saw him go into a room that was his with a gun and it was hidden," instead of, "I saw him hide a gun in his room."
I think including "Mr. Calixte uses two different operating systems" under the section "Basis of Probable Cause" for search goes beyond poor wording.
My point was more that there was plenty of other valid probable cause claims in the warrant.
If a judge had rejected this warrant on the basis of that paragraph, the police could have just removed it and we and the judge wouldn't have anything to complain about.
The grounds for the seizure were plenty strong - the email traces and network authentication would be enough to get any laptop involved in a crime seized.
And as for people claiming it wasn't a crime - there is no possible way that there was no malicious intent in sending a personal-attack email anonymously to a large group of people. (edit)In this case(/edit), the free-speech argument kind of loses its luster when you send something without your name attached.
The free-speech argument kind of loses its luster when you send something without your name attached.
Maybe you're not from the US, but the US has a legal tradition of strong protections for anonymous and pseudonymous speech. The Federalist Papers, which were a key part of the political discourse leading to the existence of the US, were published anonymously. So maybe what you say is true in Ukraine or China or Myanmar or wherever you're from, but it's certainly not true in the US.
I am from the United States - anonymous and pseudonymous protections wouldn't apply to this case of slander/libel and/or criminal harassment. Anonymously outing someone against their will does not fall under the same protections that critiquing an unfair government does.
I didn't mean to imply that all anonymous talk is without protection, just that in this specific case, the defendant in question would probably have a very difficult time making a successful free speech argument.
The issue is not how (or whether) the police "screwed up". The issue is whether a warrant of seizure should be issued on such flimsy grounds. That is quite orthogonal from the guilt or innocence of the suspect.
