“It’s very rare because it’s illegal,” Oberlander said. “It doesn’t happen very often because most organizations understand that it’s illegal.”
Police in Marion, Kansas, a town of about 2,000, seized the weekly paper’s computers and phones over a restaurant owner’s drunk-driving record. The paper verified that record on a state website, chose not to publish it, and told the police. The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 bars exactly this search, and magistrate judge Laura Viar signed the warrant anyway. The paper’s 98-year-old co-owner died the day after police went through her home.