{"id":18288,"date":"2015-08-04T00:06:40","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T05:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=18288"},"modified":"2015-08-03T18:28:15","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T23:28:15","slug":"reuters-civil-liberties-groups-freedom-at-stake-in-2nd-circuit-seized-hard-drive-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=18288","title":{"rendered":"Reuters: Civil liberties groups: Freedom at stake in 2nd Circuit seized hard drive case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reuters: Civil liberties groups: Freedom at stake in 2nd Circuit seized hard drive case<\/a> by Alison Frankel:
\n<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a rather terrifying vision of the future, inspired by the dire warnings contained in amicus briefs in a case called U.S. v. Ganias at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the course of investigating someone you are connected to, perhaps a client or business associate, the government obtains a search warrant for the records of your involvement with its target. Rather than comb through your computer hard drive to find relevant documents, government investigators copy your entire drive: your business records, personal information, emails, whatever you\u2019ve got on the computer. The feds pull out what they need for the case against their target. But instead of disposing of the rest of your electronic records, the government warehouses its copy of your hard drive. And if you happen to fall under scrutiny \u2013 or if the investigation of your colleague was just a pretext for getting a hold of your electronic files \u2013 your computer hard drive is sitting right there in government hands, waiting to be plumbed for evidence against you.<\/p>\n

Scary, right? That\u2019s why 12 public interest groups dedicated to preserving civil liberties \u2013 as well as Google, which is worried about the privacy of its users \u2013 have filed amicus briefs in the Ganias case, which, as I\u2019ve reported, raises the question of when, if ever, the government has the right to retain and search computer records seized in one investigation later found to be relevant in another. In 2014, a three-judge 2nd Circuit panel concluded the government violated the Fourth Amendment rights of financial advisor Stavros Ganias, who was convicted of tax evasion based partly on evidence the government obtained from a copy of his computer hard drive, which had been seized in a separate investigation of one of his clients.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters: Civil liberties groups: Freedom at stake in 2nd Circuit seized hard drive case by Alison Frankel:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-searches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18289,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18288\/revisions\/18289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}