Team 4: Law Enforcement Using Sneak And Peek Warrants
Federal Agents Can Enter Homes With Delayed Notice To Owners
POSTED: 2:33 pm EST February 17, 2011
UPDATED: 9:18 pm EST February 17, 2011
PITTSBURGH -- A Team 4 investigation exposes people entering homes, copying computer files and covering their tracks on the way out -- but we're not talking about criminals. We're talking about federal law enforcement agents using a special kind of search warrant known as sneak and peek.
The following is a transcript of a report by Team 4 investigator Jim Parsons that first aired Feb. 17, 2011, on WTAE Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m.
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When law enforcement wants to search your home, they have to get a warrant from a judge, and then you find out about it when they show up at your door and hand you the warrant.
It doesn't work like that with sneak and peek warrants. You're kept in the dark. And it's happening more and more often.
They can break into your home and go through your things without you finding out for months -- even a year -- and it's all perfectly legal.
Mary Beth Buchanan, former U.S. Attorney: "This tool is extremely useful to law enforcement."
Stephen Stallings, former federal prosecutor: "The question isn't, 'Should they be using them?' They're using the tools we gave them. The question is, 'Should we have given them the tools in the first place?'"
Congress made the tools easier to use in the days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, incorporating delayed-notice warrants -- or sneak and peeks -- into the Patriot Act. Before then, and even for several years after, law enforcement rarely requested them.
In the western district of Pennsylvania, federal records show zero sneak and peek warrants were obtained between 2001 and 2003. Even as late as 2007, the number was still zero.
Then, the following year, the U.S. Attorney's office requested three. And in 2009, the number of applications jumped to 18. Numbers for 2010 haven't been filed yet.
Mary Beth Buchanan was the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh who decided to start using sneak and peeks. She followed a national trend:
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690 sneak and peek warrants in 2007
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Almost 1,300 (1,291) in 2008
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1,900 (1,899) in 2009
Jim Parsons: "Do you know of any cases, in any of those 18, Mary Beth, where you used a delayed-notice search warrant to get into someone's home, and no charges were ever filed against that person?"
Mary Beth Buchanan: "I can't comment on that."
She also won't comment on whether any of the warrants have been used here in terrorism cases, but the numbers are low.
In 2009, sneak and peek warrants were obtained in only 14 terrorism cases nationwide out of 1,900 total sneak and peeks. That's less than 1 percent. Seventy-seven percent of them went to drug cases, followed by 4 percent to fraud and 3 percent to extortion.
Stallings: "I think the Patriot Act was sold to the American people as a necessary tool to combat terrorism. The sneak and peek provisions are not used to fight terrorism. They're used to fight this war on drugs."
Buchanan: "Well, for those people who think and continue to say that the Patriot Act was only intended to address terrorism, those critics are simply wrong."
Sneak and peek warrants can cause trauma for targets who turn out to be innocent.
Brandon Mayfield: "This has caused a lot of trauma to myself and to my family."
The Portland, Ore., attorney was taken into custody as a material witness in the Madrid train bombings, but the federal government later admitted a fingerprint found at the scene that they thought was Mayfield's was, in fact, not.
Mayfield: "We were actually seeing telltale signs that somebody had been in our house, that had burglarized our home... and that created a great deal of paranoia, fear and suspicion even before I was arrested."
Vic Walczak, Pennsylvania ACLU: "It really is something that should concern everybody, because it is an extreme invasion of privacy and it's done in a way where you cannot limit the damage by the prosecutors or the law enforcement officials."
Buchanan: "It is essential to the investigation, or the safety of witnesses, or the safety of evidence that they go in and delay notice. So that's all that the law does -- it delays giving the property owner notice."
Stallings: "It could be you. It could be anybody."
Stephen Stallings was one of Mary Beth Buchanan's top prosecutors. He is now in private practice.
Stallings: "When agents execute a search warrant, you know what they took. It's gone, and they leave you an inventory. But when agents execute a sneak and peek, you have no way of knowing what they've looked at. There's no check on that."
Stallings: "You know, we've gone from 'give me liberty or give me death' to 'take my liberties and give me a false sense of comfort,' and I think that's wrong."
We asked the federal government to tell us which cases here in western Pennsylvania had sneak and peek search warrants. That information was denied.
Annual reports to Congress on sneak and peek warrants:
2007 Report | 2008 Report | 2009 Report
http://www.wtae.com/team4/26902888/detail.html 
Fri Feb 18, 2011 2:42 pm
