To obtain a search warrant or arrest warrant, the law enforcement officer must demonstrate probable cause that a search or seizure is justified. An authority, usually a magistrate, will consider the totality of circumstances and determine whether to issue the warrant. [1]
I agree to your statement, if there is no search warrant. But in this case an authority already decided that the search is justified. What use are search warrants then if they can all be refused?
I understand, that even a magistrate or whatever can make errors. But if this happens a lot, the consequence will be, that search warrants are issued without second thought and the person/company affected by the search should always deny it first.
I'm all for privacy and defending individual rights, but cases like this make a farce out of court orders and the whole jurisdictional process.
I think you'll find the vast majority of search warrants aren't even read by the judge signing them. When I owned a (hosting) company it was blatantly obvious reading them, and we had a policy of challenging them when possible.
The whole search warrant/subpoena process is a joke. There is essentially no oversight on law enforcement whatsoever here and the whole trope of "but a judge reviewed it!" is a complete and utter outright lie in many cases.
It seems fairly likely that jurisdiction is what Amazon ended up challenging.
Very much agree, because there's a difference between being "innocent" and actually innocent. Only the former matters, it's subjective (jury/judge) and unknown to everyone but you, ex ante.
Sometimes the police are more invested in finding a criminal rather than the criminal.
I also believe that Amazon could provide that data alone. So what makes them refuse?