Welcome to the land of the Free (surveillance) and the home of the Brave (spies)

Utah law enforcement officials searched, without a warrant, the prescription drug records of 480 public paramedics, firefighters and other personnel to try to figure out who was stealing morphine from emergency vehicles.

This type of snooping doesn’t require crypto-cracking technology or other National Security Agency spying tools disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. All it took was a law enforcement official’s hunch in this case to search every member of the Unified Fire Authority’s prescription records.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday derided the 2013 dragnet search as “shocking” and called it a “disregard for basic legal protections” to provide law enforcement with “unfettered” access to such private data.

The warrantless search of Utah’s database chronicling every controlled substance dispensed by a pharmacist resulted in charges against one paramedic that have nothing to do with the original investigation. Instead, the authorities discovered an employee whose records exhibited “the appearance of Opioid dependence” and lodged prescription fraud charges against paramedic Ryan Pyle. Now Pyle faces a maximum five-year prison sentence if convicted of the felony.

“To me, it’s outrageous government conduct,” Pyle’s attorney, Rebecca Skordas, said in a telephone interview Monday.

via Utah cops warrantlessly search prescription drug records of 480 emergency personnel | Ars Technica.