Read the full article here

At last the judiciary are waking up to their tactics, hopefully this will curtail their blackmailing little a****s.
I don't object to them going after the infringement of copyright, it's their method and punitive claims I object to..

sounds like bad news to me. if? and when? they can present a real case this may open up a pandoras box to the entire file sharing community.

In collecting evidence media sentry hacks into the computer to find evidence of shared files infringing copyright, this is done without a warrant or the courts permission. The fact that this does not prove the offence appears to be neither here or there!
If the feds wanted to tap your telephone line or examine your bank accounts they would have to get authorisation from the courts.

So how come the RIAA and Media sentry are getting away with this?
If the state does this in a criminal case the evidence would be tainted and disallowed, why not these criminals.
Hackers are being sent to prison for hacking into government computers, how is this different. I thought the USA constitution protected it's citizens from this type of misuse.
I look forward to an answer.

Well, as far as MediaSentry goes:

What they do is either join in the download of a copyright-infringing torrent or seed their own. By doing so, and by the very nature of the way torrents work, they then have access to a list of IP addresses of known infringers.

Underhanded? Yes. Illegal? No, unfortunately.

There is no actual hacking involved, they would incur the wrath of millions of computer-savvy people who would then be able to PROVE that they had been the victim of a real crime, not some "intellectual theft."

If you're worried about them, you could try peerguardian2, but really that's only good for blocking the known bad IPs. I run it anyway.

GasSnake.
I am not worried by them as I do not file share or do anything other than fair use of purchased media.
I have read in an article on line that to get the final evidence Media Sentry does indeed enter the suspects computer to take a snapshot of it's contents.
As to being known infringer's they are only suspected. Is this why when they go for discovery they ask the court to grant them access to the defendants computer for the actual evidence.
I was pointing out that it seems a violation of US constitution protections.

If that is indeed true, then yes, they are breaking US law. If they suddenly had a large list of files that I had supposedly downloaded, I'd be suspicious and hire a team of computer forensics experts to examine it for intrusion and then counter-sue them for all they're worth.

A good idea if you have the funds but they have very deep pockets.

You don't want to sue for damages against someone with shallow pockets.

And there is enough anti-RIAA sentiment to help fund your case, not to mention that many lawyers may take it up for free because of the good exposure it would afford them.