Posted on 08/12/2023 10:06:31 AM PDT by algore
MARION — In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home.
Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”
The city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies took “everything we have,” Meyer said, and it wasn’t clear how the newspaper staff would take the weekly publication to press Tuesday night.
The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.
Meyer said he had never heard of police raiding a newspaper office during his 20 years at the Milwaukee Journal or 26 years teaching journalism at the University of Illinois.
“It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” Meyer said, as well as “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”
The search warrant, signed by Marion County District Court Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, appears to violate federal law that provides protections against searching and seizing materials from journalists. The law requires law enforcement to subpoena materials instead. Viar didn’t respond to a request to comment for this story or explain why she would authorize a potentially illegal raid.
Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said the police raid is unprecedented in Kansas.
“An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know,” Bradbury said. “This cannot be allowed to stand.”
Meyer reported last week that Marion restaurant owner Kari Newell had kicked newspaper staff out of a public forum with LaTurner, whose staff was apologetic. Newell responded to Meyer’s reporting with hostile comments on her personal Facebook page.
A confidential source contacted the newspaper, Meyer said, and provided evidence that Newell had been convicted of drunken driving and continued to use her vehicle without a driver’s license. The criminal record could jeopardize her efforts to obtain a liquor license for her catering business.
A reporter with the Marion Record used a state website to verify the information provided by the source. But Meyer suspected the source was relaying information from Newell’s husband, who had filed for divorce. Meyer decided not to publish a story about the information, and he alerted police to the situation.
Police notified Newell, who then complained at a city council meeting that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents, which isn’t true. Her public comments prompted the newspaper to set the record straight in a story published Thursday.
Sometime before 11 a.m. Friday, officers showed up simultaneously at Meyer’s home and the newspaper office. They presented a search warrant that alleges identity theft and unlawful use of a computer.
The search warrant identifies two pages worth of items that law enforcement officers were allowed to seize, including computer software and hardware, digital communications, cellular networks, servers and hard drives, items with passwords, utility records, and all documents and records pertaining to Newell.
The warrant specifically targeted ownership of computers capable of being used to “participate in the identity theft of Kari Newell.”
Officers injured a reporter’s finger by grabbing her cellphone out of her hand, Meyer said. Officers at his home took photos of his bank account information.
He said officers told him the computers, cellphones and other devices would be sent to a lab.
“I don’t know when they’ll get it back to us,” Meyer said. “They won’t tell us.”
The seized computers, server and backup hard drive include advertisements and legal notices that were supposed to appear in the next edition of the newspaper.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said. “We will publish something.”
This looks like an unjustifiable attack on the free press. Police aren’t going to make the NYTimes or WAPost incapable of going to press due to seizure of technology over an attempted identity theft allegation. We need to know more details but his narrative is problematic.
Stasi......
https://8thjd.com/ImageRepository/Document?documentId=577
The apparently do not teach constitutional law at Washtub University.
Thanks, I was worried it might have been Oz.
A Federal judge will not get a chance to rule on this before the state courts order it undone.
This judge is wildly beyond the law. Rogue.
Read the article carefully:
Lies promulgated to perpetuate political persecution, and a judge signed on to willfully violate federal law to further the act.
These officers and the judge weren’t doing their jobs: They painted targets on themselves. Willfully.
It’s outrageous and merits an appropriate response, but I won’t hold my breath.
The search warrant identifies two pages worth of items that law enforcement officers were allowed to seize, including computer software and hardware, digital communications, cellular networks, servers and hard drives, items with passwords, utility records, and all documents and records pertaining to Newell.
I wonder how you seize a cellular network.
“All about who you know,” variant number 1 — “It’s all about who you piss off that’s politically connected.”
https://law.justia.com/codes/pennsylvania/2010/title-18/chapter-76/7611/
(a) Offense defined.—A person commits the offense of
unlawful use of a computer if he:
(1) accesses or exceeds authorization to access, alters,
damages or destroys any computer, computer system, computer
network, computer software, computer program, computer
database, World Wide Web site or telecommunication device or
any part thereof with the intent to interrupt the normal
functioning of a person or to devise or execute any scheme or
artifice to defraud or deceive or control property or
services by means of false or fraudulent pretenses,
representations or promises;
(2) intentionally and without authorization accesses or
exceeds authorization to access, alters, interferes with the
operation of, damages or destroys any computer, computer
system, computer network, computer software, computer
program, computer database, World Wide Web site or
telecommunication device or any part thereof; or
(3) intentionally or knowingly and without authorization
gives or publishes a password, identifying code, personal
identification number or other confidential information about
a computer, computer system, computer network, computer
database, World Wide Web site or telecommunication device.
(b) Grading.—An offense under this section shall constitute
a felony of the third degree.
(c) Prosecution not prohibited.—Prosecution for an offense
under this section shall not prohibit prosecution under any
other section of this title.
“ The raid followed news stories about a restaurant owner who kicked reporters out of a meeting last week with U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, and revelations about the restaurant owner’s lack of a driver’s license and conviction for drunken driving.”
That’s why they got raided?
“So Kansas does not follow the Constitution?”
No wonder Dorothy was so eager to run away. Miss Gooch was on her case, and she had connections.
I was gonna ask that. There is a Marion County in Indiana too.
This must be the restaurant?
“Chef Kari Newell is taking over ownership of Parlour 1886 at the Historic Elgin Hotel on Feb. 1.”
All the authorities involved in this need to be fired and impeached, immediately.
Thanks! I couldn’t imagine this in Marion County, Florida!
It’s a very weird story. It is a mixture of personal grudges, a divorce, and politics.
In every nook & cranny of the country, the communists are on an unstoppable march...
Serfs react with crickets...
I’m in Illinois so I assumed it was my state as it would par for the course here.
Kansas....
The piece of tripe What’s The Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank was a leftist book that made fun of the ignorant hayseeds like us who are conservatives despite all the obvious advances in modern education and enlightening science. Trying to explain “ the rise of populist anti-elitist conservatism in the United States.”
If Kansas ever falls then it looks grim.
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