Court: Feds may use drug testing data from 2003

[miami_fan]

If anyone still cares.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Government investigators are entitled to the names and urine samples of about 100 Major League Baseball players who tested positive for illegal drug use in 2003, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.


The court's ruling could bolster the government's perjury case against Barry Bonds if his name is among those who tested positive. The slugger has been the target of a perjury investigation since he testified before a grand jury that he didn't knowingly ingest illegal drugs.


Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer, is currently in prison for refusing to testify in the perjury probe. Anderson was previously convicted of steroids distribution.


Investigators seized computer files containing the test results in 2004 during raids on three labs involved in the Major League Baseball testing program the previous year.


The samples had been collected by the league as part of a survey to gauge the prevalence of steroid use. The results were to be kept secret.


Michael Weiner, general counsel for the Major League Baseball Players Union, didn't immediately respond to a telephone call and e-mail seeking comment.

[Brillig]

Some reasons why people should still care...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/28/BAGL8N95J51.DTL



"We see no evidence of bad faith or pretext,'' Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain said in the majority opinion. He said prosecutors have legal grounds for retaining not only the BALCO-related records, but also the "intermingled information'' of positive tests of other athletes that agents obtained in the same records.

Thomas, in dissent, said federal agents had used the warrants as "a mere pretext for inappropriately obtaining confidential medical data'' about players not suspected of wrongdoing. In the process, he said, the agents had also obtained medical records for participants in 13 other "major sports organizations,'' three unaffiliated businesses and three sports competitions.

...
The ruling "puts Americans' most basic privacy rights in jeopardy,'' Thomas asserted. By the same rationale, he said, the government could seize the medical records of any patient that a hospital kept in the same computer file as a patient who was the target of a search warrant.