The nature of seizure of all computer files in a document search involving a Pennsylvania State Senator usually requires that they be searched off site to determine whether they are pertinent, and that does not make execution of the warrant unreasonable. United States v. Fumo, 565 F. Supp. 2d 638 (E.D. Pa. 2008):
I have already concluded that “because of the nature of computer files, the government may legally open and briefly examine each file when searching a computer pursuant to a valid warrant,” in order to determine which files are described by the warrant. See United States v. Fumo, No 06-319, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 80543, 2007 WL 3232112, at *6 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 30, 2007). For “few people keep documents of their criminal transactions in a folder marked ‘[crime] records.'” United States v. Riley, 906 F.2d 841, 845 (2d Cir. 1990). Given the large volume of information on computer equipment and security concerns, for reasons of practicality the government may conduct this review of computer files offsite. For example, in United States v. Stewart, another district court judge upheld a search and seizure pursuant to a warrant authorizing seizure of “[a]ll computer hardware and software containing any of the items mentioned in paragraphs 1 and 2 of this Attachment.” No. 96-583, 1997 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5181, 1997 WL 189381, at *1 (E.D. Pa. Apr. 16, 1997). The “computers were taken [by the agents] with the intent to copy the files, return the computers, then later sort through the files for relevant information.” 1997 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5181, [WL] at *4. The court found the procedure to be “proper” and not violative of the Fourth Amendment because “[i]t was simply not practical for the agents to search at the scene all the files on the computer hard drives of all three computers as well as their accompanying diskettes, especially since their computer expert was not at the search location.” Id. The court further noted that “[s]uch a procedure, that is, taking voluminous documents or computer files for copying and sorting away from the search location, has been upheld.” Id. (citing United States v. Henson, 848 F.2d 1374, 1383 (6th Cir. 1988); United States v. Fawole, 785 F.2d 1141, 1144 (4th Cir. 1986); United States v. Santarelli, 778 F.2d 609, 616 (11th Cir. 1985)); see also, e.g., United States v. Hill, 459 F.3d 966 (9th Cir. 2006) …; United States v. Campos, 221 F.3d 1143, 1147-48 (10th Cir. 2000) …; United States v. Upham, 168 F.3d 532, 535 (1st Cir. 1999) …; United States v. Schandl, 947 F.2d 462, 465-66 (11th Cir. 1991) …
Defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his wife’s car, that he shot at the police from, to have standing to contest a search. Thomas v. State, 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 287 (Tex. App. — San Antonio January 16, 2008), released for publication May 23, 2008, pdr refused In re Thomas, 2008 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 497 (Tex. Crim. App., Apr. 9, 2008).* (Comment: This case is dead wrong on standing. It seems obvious that the vehicle was subject to a search incident, and the court should have just decided that instead of some completely off the wall finding that a defendant has no standing in his spouse’s vehicle. And, because there is an alternative ground that is correct, SCOTUS would never take it, and it was up to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to correct it. Good luck there.)
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"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." —Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." — Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." —Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." —United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth." —Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." —Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." —Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” —United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.” —United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." —Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969)
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.” – John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." —Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
