The new guy

The Volokh Conspiracy has a new member, Orin Kerr, who is described as a "specialist in criminal law, internet law, and patent law".  His first post, entitled "Big Brother Captures the Sniper", suggests that he doesn't know much about the first of these. 

He writes:

The DC-area authorities then asked the Alabama authorities to share all of the information they had collected about the Alabama murder. The Alabama police disclosed all of their evidence to the DC-area authorities, apparently without any judicial review or court order.

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The police then interviewed people about Malvo, and learned that Malvo was with his father-in-law, John Allen Muhammad. It seems that these interviews were conducted "voluntarily," and without any court order.

Neither of these activities -- sharing information between police departments or interviewing witnesses -- involves a search and seizure issue and neither one requires a search warrant, the only form of "judicial review or court order" that would arguably be applicable. Someone who "specializes in criminal law" should surely be aware of that fact.  To suggest that any of these efforts was somehow improper because the courts were not involved shows an incomplete understanding of the applicable law.

Some checking shows that Mr. Kerr has a background that would seem to give him credibility in the criminal law arena.  Why then is his first shot so far off the mark?

Update: See also "The sniper case: Privacy and databases" on the Interesting People mailing list, posted by Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology.  (It has now been posted as a CDT Policy Post.) This message details the databases that were involved, identifies the statutory authority for access and sharing, and notes:

The sniper was caught in part using government databases consisting of carefully-defined information collected pursuant to strict guidelines and subject to privacy protections, a citizen responding to leaked (arguably illegally leaked) government information, and traditional police work (including one officer's telephone call to another police officer he knew personally and the non-electronic exchange of information).

10:07:08 AM