Reputed mobster Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. has been sentenced to 33 months in prison by a New Jersey federal court, ending a gambling case that inadvertently boosted the government's right to spy on personal computers.
Scarfo, the 37-year-old son of Philadelphia and Atlantic City mob boss Nicodemus "Little Nicky" Scarfo, stood quietly as US District Court Judge Joel Pisano passed down the sentence, responding only with "No, your honor" when asked if he would like to make a statement.
The case against Scarfo hinged on the legality of a government surveillance device that monitored keystrokes on his office computer, and turned sharply in favor of the government in December 2001 when a judge ruled the FBI acted legally.
Two months later, Scarfo pleaded guilty to charges he ran an illegal gambling operation.
What began as a commonplace bookmaking case was transformed into a battle between computer privacy advocates and FBI agents, after the disclosure that investigators spied on Scarfo's computer with a "key logger" device.
FBI agents broke into Scarfo's office in January 1999 in a search for evidence, but were stumped by a password that was protecting a computer document they suspected held evidence of illegal activity.
Returning with a search warrant, the FBI installed a device that could record keystrokes on the computer, capturing the password needed to unlock the computer document.
Defense attorneys insisted the search was illegal, arguing that the government should have obtained authorization for a wiretap, which is harder to obtain than a search warrant.
The search resembled a wiretap, they argued, because the surveillance device could monitor keystrokes while the computer was sending data on phone lines using a modem.
After months of legal wrangling, the judge ruled for the government, saying the logging device did not record keystrokes when the modem was operating.
"This case was really our first glimpse into the extraordinary new technical capabilities that law enforcement is going to have," said David Sobel, general counsel of the privacy advocate group Electronic Privacy Information Center.