There just aren’t enough :mad: . The attempt has been withdrawn, after a federal judge ruled against it, stating, “Well-founded or not, rumors of an Orwellian federal criminal investigation into the reading habits of Amazon’s customers could frighten countless potential customers into canceling planned online book purchases.” Which is undeniably true but rather misses the point: What justification could there conceivably have been for such a subpoena?! What, they want to know who’s studying up on bomb-making, etc? You can get that info off the Internet.
Did you read the whole article? It’s right there:
Sounds like they were being lazy. Imagine that, lazy bureaucrats. I’m not trying to justify what they were doing, I just don’t find it particularly shocking. That’s why we have a subpoena process. Looks like the system worked this time.
Didn’t Trent Lott resign?
Did you even read your own cite?
:o Burned. Still, all these “witnesses” can say is that they bought books from the dude – and how is that evidence of any crime? That he sold them, if that is a crime under the circumstances, can be established from Amazon’s financial records or his own Paypal or credit card records.
In my defense, I’m unusually sensitive to this sort of thing because the whole library profession is. It’s not long since the FBI was trying to use the PATRIOT ACT to snoop into patrons’ usage and borrowing records. (Librarians responded by ceasing to keep such records.)
Why would they need the buyers at all? If the owner of a restaurant I frequent is busted for tax evasion, they don’t need me to testify I gave him money.
They might. It depends on what other sources they can show – they have to be able to prove that his tax returns showed income of X, and his actual income was at least X+1. They can do this by showing his assets are so far in excess of what he could have bought with an income of X, or they can trot in eleven witnesses who each can testify that they paid the guy 1/10(X) that year.
I had a colleague who once did a tax evasion case defending a parking lot owner, and part of the evidence was the result of surveillance video and affidavits from customers over a month-long period that added up to more than the guy was paying. (This was sales tax withhold, not income tax, but you get the idea…)
You took what could have been a justifiable rant, and mischaracterized it for effect. Now you probably have Bricker thinking that he’s righteously defended his boys at the justice department.
Mods, please change his username to BrainGluten.
Huh. Learn something every day.
Thank Og for the clarification. Having bought books online in the past couple of years alone on al-Quaeda, the Confederate military, zombies, gay sex, presidential assassinations, and web privacy, I’d be a shoe-in for arrest and conviction if a white-supremacist necrophiliac sodomite ever anonymously threatened the president.
You rang?
The gay sex thing alone will get the Republicans knocking on your door. Don’t worry, though-- there’s a 50/50 chance they’ll be looking to hook up rather than arrest you!
But this wasn’t a cash based business (WAG), wouldn’t these transactions be electronically archived? Why wouldn’t the sales transactions archived by Amazon and his banking records be enough? I guess he could have taken checks, which again would be archived by the bank (with customer name & address). The feds would presumably already have the bank records indicating a transaction took place. Couldn’t the feds just toss an Amazon rep/expert up to lay a foundation of how transactions are conducted on Amazon and opine that the 24,000 transactions were indeed him selling the books indicated to give you the +1 missing from the tax returns?
From the article:
What purpose was the subpoena if they already had the information?
I’d not remember buying a book off Amazon from TaxDodgerinBasement_98 last month, let alone 8 years ago.
Okay, but how does that apply in this case? It’s not like the guy was selling his books under the table through Amazon Marketplace; they had a record of what he sold, and for how much. If what Amazon says he earned isn’t what he reported he earned, case closed.
What would the buyers of those books be able to add to this case that the records provided by Amazon themselves didn’t give prosecutors already?