Thanks Geronimo for this one. The Justice Department can legally use a controversial electronic surveillance technique in its prosecution of an alleged mobster.
In the first case of its kind, a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey has ruled that evidence surreptitiously gathered by the FBI about Nicodemo S. Scarfo's reputed loan shark operation can be presented in a trial later this year.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Politan said last week that it was perfectly acceptable for FBI agents armed with a court order to sneak into Scarfo's office, plant a keystroke sniffer in his PC and monitor its output.
Scarfo had been using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption software to encode confidential business data -- and frustrate the government's attempts to monitor him.
Politan flatly rejected the defense argument that the FBI violated both wiretap law and the Fourth Amendment, saying that the FBI's black bag jobs "suffer from no constitutional infirmity."
"Each day, advanced computer technologies and the increased accessibility to the Internet means criminal behavior is becoming more sophisticated and complex.... As a result of this surge in so-called 'cyber crime,' law enforcement's ability to vigorously pursue such rogues cannot be hindered where all constitutional limitations are scrupulously observed," Politan said.
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