FEAR-List Bulletin posted by Leon Felkins, 3/28/98
While it may or may not be a criminal offense, apparently just having information about criminal activities can result in the forfeiture and seizure of the device storing the information.
I quote the following from the uplifting essay, "Supplement to Federal Guidelines for Searching and Seizing Computers" (http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/supplement/ssgsup.htm) located at the U.S. Department of Justice (??) site (under the section, III. Seizing Hardware -- C. Hardware as an Instrumentality of the Offense):
"Computer equipment can be an instrumentality of the offense even where it is less intimately associated with the offense. In United States v. Real Property & Premises Known as 5528 Belle Pond Drive, 783 F. Supp. 253 (E.D. Va. 1991), aff'd on other grounds, U.S. v. Campbell, No. 92-1104, 1992 WL 332255 (4th Cir. Nov. 16, 1992), the Eastern District of Virginia held that a computer, monitor, printer, keyboard, and related accessories found during a search of property for marijuana were properly seized and forfeited to the government under 21 U.S.C. § 881(a)(2) as being equipment used for manufacturing, processing, delivering, importing, or exporting any controlled substance under the statute. During the search for drugs, officers found a computer printout that detailed the growing characteristics of the marijuana plants. The same file was also stored on the defendant's computer. The court held that "[b]ecause storing marijuana-growing data in a computer is use of the computer in manufacturing a controlled substance in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1), the court finds that the defendant computer is forfeitable to the government under 21 U.S.C. §881(a)(7)." Real Property, 783 F. Supp. at 256. "
Now this worries me. Do we not all have old videos laying around showing the commissions of crimes in considerable detail? What about students of law who have details of criminal activities in their files?
Surely they are mistaken here. Aren't they?