N.D.Cal.: No REP in a university owned computer where defendant was warned of no privacy in computer

A government contractor doing cyber security noticed that there was high traffic to potential child pornography websites from a government office in a university. After further investigation, it was determined that a particular IP address was involved, and then it was narrowed down to one computer issued to defendant by the university under a policy that said that the computer belonged to the university and was subject to monitoring. The computer was seized by university police, and then a search warrant was issued for its contents on a wealth of probable cause, including a prior offense for sexually molesting a child. There was no reasonable expectation of privacy in this computer. United States v. Busby, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 145217 (N.D. Cal. December 14, 2011):

As a general matter, courts have found that an employee’s expectation of privacy in files stored on a work-issued computer is not objectively reasonable where the employer notifies employees that their computer files are subject to monitoring. See United States v. Simons, 206 F.3d 392, 398 (4th Cir. 2000) (holding that government employee’s belief that his computer files were private was not objectively reasonable where the employer’s policy reserved its right to “audit, inspect, and monitor” his computer files); United States v. Angevine, 281 F.3d 1130, 1134 (10th Cir. 2002) (upholding denial of defendant professor’s motion to suppress child pornography located on the erased files on his office computer which was part of a university network where the university’s computer use policy notified users that internet activity was subject to monitoring); Sporer v. UAL Corp., No. C 08-02835 JSW, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76852, 2009 WL 2761329, at *5 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 27, 2009) (finding that employee lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in his work email where the employer had a policy of monitoring its employee’s computer use and warned employees that they had no expectation of privacy on e-mail transmitted on the company system); Wasson v. Sonoma County Junior Coll., 4 F. Supp. 2d 893, 905-906 (N.D. Cal. 1997) (employer’s computer policy giving it “the right to access all information stored on [the employer’s] computers” defeated employee’s reasonable expectation of privacy in files stored on employer’s computers); but see United States v. Heckenkamp, 482 F.3d 1142, 1147 (9th Cir. 2007) (university student had a reasonable expectation of privacy in files on his personal computer connected to the university network where the university had “no announced monitoring policy on the network”).