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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: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Wednesday September 30 2015, @08:11PM
the fourth amendment says, and i quote:
they can look in no place except the place specifically described in the warrant, and take no evidence except what is specifically described in the warrant. imaging the whole harddrive, rather than simply taking the files in question, is outside the scope of a valid warrant. a warrant for "everything on the harddrive" is a general warrant and explicitly unconstitutional. everything except the specific files in question should have been immediately removed from law enforcement's possession.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday September 30 2015, @08:14PM
Yeah, and that's a fair interpretation. They just also clearly received a second warrant based on their investigations for the first for the materials examined in the second.
I really don't think there's any fruit of the forbidden tree here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Wednesday September 30 2015, @08:46PM
the materials for which they received the second warrant were unrelated to the files which should have been the only ones seized in the first. thats what this whole article is all about - they took stuff which wasn't authorized by the warrant, and then dug through it later to find something else for which to prosecute him.