Not necessarily. For example, probable cause isn't needed to detain a suspect, reasonable suspicion is. Reasonable suspicion requires the officer to be able to articulate with particularity facts that would lead him/her to believe that a person was up to criminal activity. "Probable cause" on the other hand is a horribly slippery term for which there is no single definition or standard that the Supreme Court has ever settled on. For example, the definition of reasonable suspicion is largely clear and provides a standard, but it has also been used as the definition for probable cause. And in a case like this, there may be federal national securities laws in place that allow for something like this (computer fraud across state lines maybe?), but I don't know.
I've read up on it more since I posted. From a fourth amendment point of view (which applies here), there is no differentiation between "detained" and "arrested". The term in the constitution is "seizure," which covers both. The most recent decision from the SCOTUS that directly addresses it would appear to be "Michigan v. Chesternut, 486 U.S. 567 (1988)" where they were careful to address if the suspect had been "seized" and rather than "arrested."
The separation into "detention" and "arrest" is an entirely artificial division that seems to be created only to imply that a person does not have Fourth Amendment rights when they in fact do.
That's fine. But there are different degrees of arrest. I've bolded and enlarged the term "custodial arrest" below, so if you want to skip all this other stuff and just see that, it's there.
Now, because we don't know the barest facts of the situation other than allegations made, there's no real way to tell what happened. Again, I do not support the cops barging into someone's house and doing what the article alleges. However, there are more circumstances under which the arrest/detainment/etc. was lawful than otherwise.
I promised myself I would try to be less mumbo-jumbo with the legal stuff, but let me try and clear this up. According to the few things we know and were alleged, there was a seizure of the person, and a search of the computer. This triggers, among other things, the search incident to arrest doctrine.
The Supreme Court long has recognized that the Fourth Amendment authorizes a police officer to conduct a warrantless search incident to a lawful arrest.
Two considerations justify such a search:
1. The need to protect the arresting officer and others from physical harm; and
2. The need to prevent the concealment or destruction of evidence.
These justifications generally place certain limits upon a search incident to an arrest. The Supreme Court held in Chimel v. California, that upon lawfully arresting an individual, the police may conduct a search of the arrestee’s person and the area "within his immediate control," meaning the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.
However, the Court subsequently explained, “If there is no possibility that an arrestee could reach into the area that law enforcement officers seek to search, both justifications for the search-incident-to-arrest exception [to the warrant requirement] are absent and the rule does not apply.”
So here we encounter the first problem with the article. We don't know the circumstances of the arrest. We don't know:
1. If there was a search warrant, and if so, what kind. This is especially problematic when it comes to the search of phone or other mobile device. In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court held in a 9-0 vote that police/agents must have a search warrant before seizing and subsequently conducting a forensic search of the contents of such a device. That case did not necessarily cover laptops, but cellphones. However, according to the language the Court used in that case, e.g. that the search of a mobile device can be more intrusive than even the most thorough scouring of one's own home, it can be safely construed that the cops/agents need a warrant to conduct a search of a laptop.
2. Where did this search and seizure take place? It makes a big difference as we have different expectations of privacy depending on where we are and the magnitude of the alleged violation will vary with that. For example, coupled with the knock and announce rule(s), if the agents barged through completely unannounced into the home, then it's a really serious violation unless there were exigent circumstances such as destruction of evidence (they'd likely need more in this case). If however, the alleged victim answered the door, the agents identified themselves, and he allowed them to come in, then no violation would have occurred. The search of the computer would likely have still required a warrant unless there's evidence that he waived that right. Or, if the alleged victim was driving in his car, sitting at a park, etc. then the rules change to allow more liberal conduct on the part of the government.
3. What was the demeanor of the suspect at the time of the incident? For example, was he cooperative, combative, threatening, etc.? Could the agents articulate reasons as to why he needed to be handcuffed? We simply do not know.
In conducting a search incident to an arrest, police officers may use a “reasonable” amount of force to overcome the arrestee’s active resistance or to prevent the destruction or concealment of evidence,
Sanders v. State, 543 S.E.2d 452 (because defendant's arrest was lawful, the officer was authorized to discover or seize any item that was unlawful to possess). So in this case, if the arrest was lawful, the cops/agents were operating within the law.
In
Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), the Supreme Court held that searches made in an “improper manner” violate the Fourth Amendment. In that case however, the Court concluded that under the circumstances, the non-consensual withdrawal of a blood sample from an arrestee by a physician constituted only a minor intrusion into the arrestee’s body and therefore did not violate the Fourth Amendment. So in the case at hand, the temporary arrest of the suspect may have been a lot less intrusive than a blood test, which again points to lawful conduct by the agents.
The Fourth Amendment, however, prohibits the use of “excessive” force. Nevertheless, police officers may use a considerable amount of force before it will be deemed to be “excessive” and hence “unreasonable,
United States v. Harrison, 432 F.2d 1328, 1330 (D.C. Cir. 1970) (police officer did not use unreasonable force when he grabbed arrestee by throat to prevent him from swallowing envelope).
So, for the purposes of a seizure, you can call it an arrest, but it doesn't necessarily implicate any wrongdoing on the part of the government. And I should have been more clear about that when responding to your post. However, there is a big difference between a temporary arrest and
custodial arrest. A “custodial arrest” involves “the taking of a suspect into custody and transporting him to the police station.”
United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 235, 94 S. Ct. 467, 38 L. Ed. 2d 427 (1973). See also
United States v. Garcia, 376 F.3d 648, 651 (7th Cir. 2004) (“A ‘full custodial arrest’ involves a trip to the stationhouse for booking and incarceration.”)
Upon custodial arrest the full protections of the 4th, 5th, 6th, the 8th Amendments are triggered, and that's where abuses of Constitutional rights will often take place.
In this case, while the 4th is implicated, the suspect was never taken into custody. So assuming for the moment that the government was 100% wrong in everything they did in this case, the question for the victim is now about remedy. What damages did he suffer? Unfortunately, the most likely remedy is an internal affairs investigation. That's because to sue under an issue arising under the federal Constitution, one must have standing to sue, which means that a person must be sufficiently affected by the matter at hand, and there must be a case or controversy that can be resolved by legal action.There are three requirements for Article III standing:
1. Injury in fact, which means an invasion of a legally protected interest that is concrete and particularized, and actual or imminent. So assuming things went down exactly the way the article claims, we have #1 covered because the search and seizure were unlawful, and therefore a violation of the 4th AM.
2. A causal relationship between the injury and the challenged conduct, which means that the injury fairly can be traced to the challenged action of the defendant... Now, what injury beyond the 4th Amendment violations did the victim suffer? Were there broken bones, stitches, the unlawful seizure of his property, etc.? The article in the OP mentions nothing of the kind. It says the agents uncuffed him and left.
3. A likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision, which means that there's a prospect of obtaining relief from the injury as a result of a favorable ruling... So, what will the Court tell the agents/agency who committed the wrong? "Don't do it again"?
So unless there's facts indicating more, and even if the agents acted improperly, it's difficult to see how the victim will recover.
The government is allowed to make mistakes. They can be assholes about it suffer little, if any consequences for it, but a simple temporary arrest based on a mistake where no one's person was harmed nor their property seized for more than for a short while will likely not be deemed actionable other than again, an internal affairs investigation. And good luck to the victim with that. That certainly doesn't make it right, but again,
without knowing more, it's hard to interpret the situation any other way than what's described above.
