Monday, September 06, 2010
Hawaii federal district court leads nation in 2008 Patriot Act delayed-notice search warrant requests
by Larry Geller
This data is for 2008, released in 2009.
Hawaii’s federal district court lead the nation by a wide margin in applications for delayed-notice search warrants under the Patriot Act with 145 requests. The next closest was the Southern District of Texas with 106 requests. Only Texas as a whole (all circuits) had more requests (186) than Hawaii.
Does that mean Hawaii harbors lots of terrorists? No. The warrants have been used mainly to assist the war on drugs, not the war on terrorism.
Of the national total of 763 warrant requests, only three were related to investigations of terrorism.. 474 were in connection with drug charges. That’s 62% for drugs, and less than 0.4% against terrorism.
Hawaii stands far above other federal districts with the greatest number of applications for these warrants. All were by federal judges, none by state judges.
The report containing 2008 data was posted on the Huffington Post website. A copy may be downloaded here. Hat tip to the Progressive Review for pointer to the report.
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