D.Ore.: SW for all emails for 6½ months was overbroad; it could be narrowed for word search

A search warrant to Google for all emails from the target’s accounts from October 1, 2016 to April 14, 2017 was overbroad. It was a sex trafficking investigation, but the request can be narrowed because Google can word search and narrow the inquiry. In re Info. Associated with Four Redacted Gmail Accounts, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43781 (D. Ore. Mar. 16, 2018):

The Court finds that the search warrants challenged here, which require Google to disclose to the government the “contents of all emails associated with the Email Account[s,]” are overbroad because it is unreasonable to compel a provider to disclose every email in its client’s account when the provider is able to disclose only those emails the government has probable cause to search. See In the Matter of the Search of Google Email Accts. Identified in Attach. A, 92 F. Supp. 3d 944, 946 (D. Alaska 2015) (denying two-step Google search warrant application as overbroad where although “the government promises to limit its search to the relevant date ranges, nothing in the proposed warrant precludes its agents from perusing other email content regardless how remote or how unrelated that content may be to the current investigation”); In re Redacted@gmail.com, 62 F. Supp. 3d at 1104 (denying two-step Google search warrant application and stating that “[t]he court is nevertheless unpersuaded that the particular seize first, search second [warrant] proposed here is reasonable in the Fourth Amendment sense of the word”); U.S. v. Matter of Search of Info. Assoc. with Fifteen Email Addresses, No. 2:17-CM-3152-WC, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 159535, 2017 WL 4322826, at *7, 11 (M.D. Ala. Sept. 28, 2017) (holding that “the Government’s current request for all data related to all the [Google and other] email accounts is too broad” and ordering the government to include “a date restriction on the data to be turned over by the provider based on an individualized assessment of the accompanying probable cause evidence for each email account”) (emphasis in original)