p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- In April, when Boston College campus police raided a computer science student’s dorm room, they ended up seizing computers, an iPod, a cell phone, and other technology, p2pnet reported.

Boston College also cut off the student’s network access.

“But the student says the search was executed on an invalid warrant and is now demanding the immediate return of his equipment, and that investigators be barred from further searches or analysis of his digital data,” said the story.

Now, however, police have been ordered to return the gear after the the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled there was no probable cause to search the room in the first place, says the EFF which,  with Fish & Richardson attorneys Adam Kessel, Lawrence Kolodney, and Tom Brown, had appealed the case.

The dorm room search, “stemmed from an investigation into who sent an email to a Boston College mailing list alleging another student was gay,” said the EFF when news broke.

Police claimed they knew who’d sent the email and that the sender had committed the crimes of  “obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation” and obtaining “unauthorized access to a computer system”.

The decision now stands as the highest state court opinion to, “reject the dangerous theory that terms of service violations constitute computer ‘hacking” crimes”, says the EFF.

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p2pnet – Cops target student over ‘gay’ email, April 14, 2009
EFF – Judge Rules Dorm Room Search for Evidence of Prank Email Illegal, May 22, 2009
EFF – Computer Science Student Targeted for Criminal Investigation for Allegedly Sending Email, April 13, 2009