As noted in this earlier post, I have long had reservations regarding the anti-steroids campaign that is promoted by various regulatory bodies and the media. As Peter Henning noted over the holiday season in this extensive post, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued an important decision in the Balco case in which the appellate court overturned three lower court orders that had declared government searches unconstitutional and directed the government to return the drug tests to the businesses that were searched. In United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc., a divided Ninth Circuit panel reversed the lower court rulings and upheld the search warrants, including seizure of computer records, and ordered the lower courts to segregate records that fall outside the scope of the warrants so that they can be reviewed by a federal magistrate. The appellate decision also reversed the district judge’s order quashing the subpoena issued after the search, and went on to declare that the government may issue a subpoena for documents held by a third party even after a search for the same records.
In this lucid ReasonOnline op-ed, Jacob Sullum sums up why all of this is quite troubling:

The 9th Circuit’s loose treatment of “intermingled” data allows investigators to peruse the confidential electronic records of people who are not suspects, hoping to pull up something incriminating. It replaces a particularized warrant based on probable cause with a fishing license.

The mob believes that the athletes who use steroids are cheating criminals who should be punished. Let’s just hope that the laws that protect us from government’s overwhelming prosecutorial power aren’t trampled in the process of upholding the myth of fair play in professional sports.