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The Justice Department is set to argue Wednesday before a federal appeals court that it may prosecute people for crimes based on evidence obtained from their computers—evidence that was outside the scope of an original probable-cause search warrant.
That's a big deal in today's digital age. Society has evolved to the point that many people keep all of their papers and effects co-mingled on their computer hard drives.
The highly nuanced legal dispute initially seems innocent enough. It concerns an accountant's tax evasion conviction and two-year prison sentence in 2012 that was based on a court-authorized search and imaging of his computer files. Stavros Ganias' files were copied as part of an Army overbilling investigation into one of his clients. Holding on to the imaged files for nearly three years, Connecticut authorities discovered fresh evidence unrelated to the initial search of the files and got new search warrants to investigate more of the accountant's mirrored files that were already in the government's possession. All the while, Ganias had subsequently deleted those files from his hard drives after the government had imaged them, according to court records.
The case asks how long the government can retain somebody's computer files—files that are unrelated to a court warrant. The accountant's lawyers said that once the government got what it needed regarding the accountant's client, the remainder of Ganias' files should have been purged. Federal prosecutors disagreed and said they retained the imaged files for numerous reasons, including for authentication purposes and to allow "the government to comply with its discovery obligations imposed by the Constitution."
What if it were a 3-D capture of all things in view while executing a search warrant — like a "cop-cam" on steroids?
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Wednesday September 30 2015, @05:06PM
As the summary said, this is a nuanced case. If your machine had been legally imaged for the botnet investigation, the government would still need to get a second search warrant to search for the incriminating email stating that you were drunk. I agree with ikanreed on this. We need to tread lightly, and perhaps create some standards for how long we retain evidence of this nature, but this is more of an edge case. The investigators had probable cause to obtain a warrant to search the machine both times, this was not a fishing expedition.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2015, @05:15PM
How would they know of an incriminating email about some barhopping months ago to get a search warrant if they did not already find the incriminating email by trolling around the data? Such as it is with this court case.
The detectives had no valid reason to get a search warrant for a specific piece of information they "did not know about" yet a judge gave a specific search warrant for a specific piece of information that just so happened to be in the evidence locker for a long period of time.
In a way you are right. This was not a fishing expedition. This was the aftermath of one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 01 2015, @10:29AM
No, what we need to do is force the government to get rid of the data. Your worthless standards will be abused, bypassed, and/or turn out to be ineffective. Or they'll just ignore them like they do the constitution; exactly what they did here. But it's more difficult for them to decide later that they want to abuse this data if they do not even have it. Even the mere possession of the data is a violation.
I would rather let numerous Bad Guys go than allow them to do this.