Federal agents in Phoenix and elsewhere in the country raided schools and other targets in a national crackdown on pirated music CDs and movies. Agents poured through data and records at a computer command center for the Deer Valley School District in the northwest Valley and blocked the office from the public. It was among other places in Arizona and “quite a few other states” where sealed search warrants were served, the FBI said. The raids came on the same day that Justice Department officials in Washington announced the creation of a new Intellectual Property Task Force to step up copyright enforcement. Some of the stolen copyrighted material being sought in the raids is suspected as having been distributed from overseas sources. FBI spokesman Paul Bresson would not comment on why the federal government was searching a school district’s system and he would not identify the other sites in Arizona or elsewhere that were served with warrants. Bresson refused to comment on the raids at Deer Valley facility and elsewhere and would not say how targets were identified, noting the search warrants were under court-ordered seal.
Every student, employee and volunteer in the Deer Valley school district must sign an Internet contract, which outlines expectations for use of the Internet on school computers. Among the expectations is that the Internet would only be used for educational purposes. Those who violate the contract will be banned from using computers with Internet access. “Some parents, especially of elementary students, don’t want their kids accessing the Internet,” Tait said. Each person who uses a school computer must log in with a password, Tait said, which means every user can be tracked. “It looks like the FBI is looking at actions of individuals within the district as opposed to the operations of the district,” Tait said. Deer Valley has blocked many sites from student use, including those where movies and music can be downloaded. But with sites changing and with the sheer number of sites, “it’s difficult to block all illicit sites,” Tait said.
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