Judge Backs Amazon, Raps Feds Over Book Records

netbuzz alerts us to a ruling in federal court that has just been made public. US Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker told the Feds to lay off Amazon in denying prosecutors' requests for records of who bought what books at the online retailer. The judge wrote, "The [subpoena's] chilling effect on expressive e-commerce would frost keyboards across America." Prosecutors had demanded 24,000 transaction records from Amazon, all in service of convicting a city official on charges of fraud and tax evasion. In the end they found customer information on the official's PC, where they should have looked in the first place.

Re:Amazon has dangerous material

[MillionthMonkey]

If that was meant as a joke, then reality is already one step ahead of you. [digg.com]

Re:Amazon has dangerous material

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong! Carter didnt let them all out. Reagan cut all the fed budget for mental instituions and that forced all them out onto the streets.

Re:Amazon has dangerous material

[Attila Dimedici]

You are both wrong (although the first poster is closer), the courts ordered that they be released. The rulings were made in the early to mid 70's. The courts ruled that it was unconstitutional to institutionalize people against their will unless they were a demonstrable danger to society (even if the individual was incapable of taking care of themselves). By the late 70's/early 80's, when the outcome of these rulings became apparent (that most of those individuals who had been institutionalized couldn't take care of themselves), the activists who had led the charge to eliminate the institutions were surprised to discover that the average American wasn't willing to pay them to take care of these people (the average American thought that the institutions were a cost effective method that needed to have the abuses corrected).

Re:Amazon has dangerous material

[sumdumass]

lol,,, Nope. The ACLU went to bat for some crazy woman that committed suicide about 9 months after release from an asylum. They took her case to the US supreme court and it was ordered that if they don't pose a threat to themselves or others, then they cannot be detained. This happened in the 60s and the mid 70s. This caused an evaluation of if everyone nutcase locked up and it ended up dumping a shitload of people on the street. The problem had something to do with detaining people that were perfectly fine when under medication but the ACLU's love affair got started earlier with Thorazine and some other drug.

The cut in budgeting was because the residents of the mental institutions went from full to capacity to 30% or so. When reagan was the governor of CA, he took this set of rulings along with the state mental health boards wishes and cut the budget. But this was done as governor not president. The same mental patients were being dumped all around the country when this first started happening. here [claytoncramer.com] is a link to a site that touches on it and Here is another that deals withCalifornia [snopes.com]

What your referring to is actually when the homeless problem was apparent and advocacy groups started lobbying for them. It was like they wanted to redeem their earlier actions. The supposed cuts were actually cuts in increases spending that Reagan rejected. Although the increased asked for was cut, the budget was actually increased but Reagan still took flak over it.