FBI Agents Cut DSL, Posed as Repairmen to Conduct Search: Motion

<p>Las Vegas is set to become the focal point for a Fourth Amendment issue that's as brazen as it is kooky.</p>
<p>Suspecting several high rollers staying at Caesars Palace were engaged in an illegal bookmaking operation, the feds allegedly <a title="Can Authorities Cut Off Utilities And Pose As Repairmen To Search A Home?" href="http://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359725475/can-authorities-cut-off-utilitie... target="_blank">cut off Internet access to their $25,000-per-night private villa, then posed as repairmen</a> to enter the villa, snoop around, and use that snooping as the basis for a subsequent search warrant.</p>
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<p><strong>There's Something Missing From This Affidavit</strong></p>
<p>Much of that is curiously missing from <a title="Criminal complaint" href="http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/searchwarrantaffid... target="_blank">the federal criminal complaint filed against Wei Seng Phua and seven others</a>, which says only that the occupants of one of the villas called a technician to repair DSL lines in the villa. The technician, of course, was an undercover FBI agent. According to Tom Goldstein, one of the defendants' attorneys (and the co-founder of SCOTUSblog), the government conveniently omitted the fact it had downed the Internet connection so that the villa's occupants would call repair people, who were undercover agents.</p>
<p>According to <a title="FBI Agents Snuck in Disguised as Repairmen: Motion to Suppress" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/244902100/FBI-Agents-Snuck-in-Disguised-as-Rep... target="_blank">the defense motion to suppress evidence</a>, they "have been unable to find a single time in which any law enforcement agency in the country has ever resorted to using a scheme like this one -- terminating a service to a residence in order to deceive the occupants into calling for assistance. Unsurprisingly, every court to consider anything <em>remotely</em> similar has found it flagrantly unconstitutional."</p>
<p>Goldstein says that the FBI's actions were so brazen that they themselves knew what they were doing was wrong. This, he suggests, is why probable cause affidavits don't mention the scheme, and also why, in recordings the defense obtained of the undercover surveillance, agents caution each other that "these things are still on just so you guys know."</p>

Read more: http://blogs.findlaw.com/ninth_circuit/2014/10/fbi-agents-cut-dsl-posed-...