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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.
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