Supremes Mull Whether Bad Databases Make for Illegal Searches If a false entry in a database leads to a unconstitutional police search that reveals illegal drugs, does the government get to hold it against you? That's the question the Supreme Court will tackle on Tuesday in a case civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center argue will have broad implications in a world where we are constantly being evaluated against databases and watch lists that are riddled with frustratingly persistent errors. "In these interlinked databases, one error can spread like a disease, infecting every system it touches and condemning the individual to whom this error refers to suffer substantial delay, harassment, and improper arrest," EPIC director Marc Rotenberg argued in a friend of the court brief (.pdf). Not surprisingly, the government disagrees. "Police officers in the field must be allowed to rely on information they receive from others when it is reasonable to do so," the Justice Department wrote in its brief (.pdf), arguing that throwing out the evidence won't make errors less likely....