SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2015, @04:57PM
And you hit the nail on the head why we have the 4th amendment. Unfortunately the constitution has an assumption in it. You get your info/goods back when they are done. In this case it should be wiped. The gov is playing with the assumption and saying it is not there. Because legally it is not. Only by tradition/common law is it there. Even then at the discretion of the court. The courts should ask the congress to create a law stating it explicitly.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday September 30 2015, @05:18PM
But if they took pictures of your home while searching it, which is totally permissible, those wouldn't be destroyed either. So let's say that while searching your apartment they take a picture that happens to show a bloodstain in the carpet. Based on watching cop shows, I'd say they could totally pull that file and notice the bloodstain later, even if you had changed your carpet in the meantime, and I don't think they would need a warrant to do that. I'm not sure how this is different, except that imaging a hard drive allows cops to grab a whole lot of evidence without doing much work, and it's cheap to store it indefinitely "just in case". Problem is that while for traditional evidence, they're only going to pull your file if some other evidence implicates you in a major crime, dropping the barrier makes the system a lot easier to abuse. All you'd need to do is add some automated keyword searches and they could probably make trouble for almost anyone whose drive had been imaged.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2015, @05:33PM
dropping the barrier makes the system a lot easier to abuse
That is exactly why we have the 4th. Abuse. The first 8 of the bill of rights are there because these are exactly the sorts of thing the English Crown was doing to the people of the England and its commonwealth. With digital it is even easier. Which is the point of digital. To be easier with respect to everything. The only thing I disagree with with the constitution is that it is not broken out enough. There are about 20+ rights being exposed in those 8. They were being too brief. They should have broken it out and apparently more clear. With a 'this is what we mean here' guide to back it up.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday September 30 2015, @10:52PM
This seem like an plain view doctrine issue. With the example of taking photographs, the bloodstain is in plain view, but say there's some evidence of some other wrongdoing concealed out of plain view that that the cops miss. They can't just come back to your home later without at least getting another warrant, and, unlike in this case, I imagine (hope) would probably be harder to get than just telling the judge, “Oh snap, we never checked that his Bible didn't have a secret compartment.”
On the one hand, maybe the plain view doctrine should apply in some kind of digital-metaphor way, and if the cops didn't find what they originally had a warrant for, they shouldn't be able to poke around other “places” on the filesystem they overlooked after-the-fact. On the other hand, perhaps people up to naughty things should keep their naughty things on removable media and keep that out of plain view.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday September 30 2015, @11:19PM
That's an interesting angle on it. I guess the question then becomes how we map the concept of visibility onto digital media. Is the accountant's drive kind of akin to a closet with all his documents pinned to the wall inside? Then if you open the closet (which you certainly could in a search) and snap a hi-res picture, you'd have copies of all those documents. If the volume were encrypted or contained encrypted directories, those would presumably not be in plain sight any longer. The wise thing for those with something to hide would be either steganography (equivalent to the Bible with a secret compartment), or encryption (equivalent to a locked box). I guess my point is that once you allow for a hard drive to be completely imaged in an investigation, the resulting "image" is probably going to be treated much like photographic evidence would be. A photo showing the closed Bible or the locked box will never prove anything by itself.